The Sharks will be tasked to repeat as ball hockey champions.
This month the squad claimed the Spring 2011 Cayman Islands Ball Hockey League championship. Even though the side took down the BDO Pirates 4-2 in a re-match of last season’s final, the odds are against consecutive title runs.
Assistant team captain Tim Courtis states that the club is expecting a major upheaval of players.
“Our team had a great group of defence men in Tim Woolaver, Robert Mahadeo and I,” Courtis said. “Other teams found it hard to score against them. As a team we all gelled together quickly to make the finals twice.
“After the end of each year there’s a player draft. That’s the issue with a repeat. The draft is about keeping teams even as people leave the island. We probably won’t have the same players and that’s a shame because this was a special group of guys.
“There’s talk of trying to start a youth ball hockey league. Ball hockey is a lot less expensive than roller hockey because of the lack of equipment. You basically got to run instead of having to skate. I think that could work with locals and in turn be a great feeder program for the adult league. It’s a good idea and that could help us.”
The Sharks had an interesting stretch of games the last few months. The side rolled into the playoffs with the number one seed in the regular season with the competition’s best offence. From there they downed a determined Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Islanders side 5-3 in the semi-finals.
Sharks captain Tim Woolaver feels keeping the team together will be crucial for repeating that success.
“It will be tough to keep the team together with the draft,” Woolaver said. “We want to stay together and take it from here. Everyone played hard the whole season. The team came together at the right time, played hard and we played strong during the season. Even though Scott Gossen was top scorer and Shawn Lunt was a phenomenal goalie, we didn’t depend on one or two guys to win.
“Ian Lambert deserves mention for scoring the game-winning goal in both of our playoff games. Guys like Derek Bruce and Renald Durand especially stepped up for us.”
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