SUNDRE - The coach of the Sundre atom Huskies last week praised his team’s work ethic.
“They’re a great bunch of kids to work with,” said Kevin Seidel.
“I never have to push them, they work very hard. That can be a hard skill to teach. Perhaps that’s more of a characteristic, is their work ethic,” said Seidel.
While children’s attention spans can have a tendency to be fleeting and they’re not always 100 per cent focused, the coach said they are nevertheless “always there to have fun and improve.”
The squad recently hosted seven visiting teams — Cochrane, Symons Valley, Canmore, Strathcona, Duchess, Sherwood Park and Edmonton — from Friday, Dec. 6 to Sunday, Dec. 8 during its annual home tournament at the Sundre Arena.
“It went really well,” said Seidel.
“We had a good turnout.”
The Huskies performed admirably, he said, adding several games were exciting, overtime nail-biters. But always arranging evenly matched teams of comparable calibre can be challenging, and a few of the games were runaways, he added.
All of the teams got to play three games.
In their first game against Cochrane on Friday, Dec. 6, the Huskies asserted control of the game, winning by a dominating score of 16-2.
Facing off against Symons Valley the following day, the Huskies put up a good fight but just barely came up short, losing the closely contested match by just one goal.
“We ended up pulling our goalie at the very end,” he said, adding the final score was 4-3.
Their third and final matchup, on Sunday, Dec. 8, was against Sherwood Park, with the Huskies comfortably sweeping ahead to win 8-1.
“Our kids worked so hard,” he said.
“I think it was a good experience for a lot of them.”
Duchess won the tournament after beating Symons Valley 7-4, he said.
The tournament — every Sundre Minor Hockey Association team takes turns hosting a similar event throughout the season — is the atoms’ main annual fundraiser, generating some revenue for whatever’s needed, such as covering fees to participate in other tournaments on the road, he said.
People had an opportunity to purchase raffle tickets that they could then place into a box for a chance to win a variety of prizes donated by local businesses and individuals.
“We had a total of 19 sponsors,” said the coach, expressing his appreciation not only for all of those contributions, but also to the teams that committed to coming out to play. He also extended gratitude "for the tremendous amount of time and hard work the Sundre atom Huskies' parents, families and volunteers did to make the tournament a great success.”
Last but certainly not least, also critical in ensuring a smooth event was the valuable effort of referees, linesmen as well as arena staff, he said.
“They did a great job.”
Meanwhile, the squad’s season seems to be coming along nicely so far.
The atom Huskies placed in tier 4 with five other teams following the Central Alberta Hockey League’s pre-season rounds earlier in November, with regular games getting started a couple of weeks later, he said.
“Their strengths are their hard work and ability to learn,” he said.
“They pick things up quite quick and they keep trying and trying. Their work ethic is tremendous.”
Furthermore, the atoms not only bring to the ice a caring and “very positive attitude,” but they also get along really well and have bonded as a group, he said.
Earlier this season, the focus during practices largely revolved around positioning, passing and breaking out, he said.
“I feel we’ve caught up with stronger teams on that.”
So the coach said he is now primarily focused during practices on further developing individual skills and tactics “that we’ll need later on in the season,” such as technical edge skating and stick handling, while still allocating some time to the basics.
