Titans Cup Tournament Recap - February 23-25
Submitted By Mark Gibson on Tue 03 06, 18
The Titans Cup in Ottawa at the end of February featured co-ed competition, which gave our 14U boys and girls a chance to team up to take on teams from across the province and beyond.
The focus of the tournament was on developing skills and shaking things up for the players since they would be playing together with new teammates and in different roles. It took them some time to mesh, which the scores reflected. After each game they played, the differential lessened. Titans Black broke KW 12-3, Titans Gold got them 7-3, and, after traveling all the way from New Brunswick, St. John jumped them 8-5. This pushed our team into a playoff bracket that included some familiar faces from our side of Ontario: the Hammer and Southwest. Both games ended 7-6, with KW on the wrong end against the Hammer when a last second Inferno shot popped off the post, preventing the tie. However, our 14U co-ed team swung things around against Southwest to score the seven that brought them a victory in KW’s final game of the weekend.
The narrowing margins of the scores and the victory in their last game show that the boys and girls were finally able to blend their two teams to work together and compete as one. Passing and scoring improved, defensive switches started to work, and there were fewer long faces and a lot more fight. Both the boys and the girls will need to bring the skills they worked on this weekend and use them to build their teams to be the best they can be leading into their final tournament of the season before Provincials -- March Madness in Mavericks territory.