Novice team victorious during first out-of-province tourney
- EFN Staff | June 10, 2018
Sixty-seven teams travelled from near and far to compete in this year’s 13th Annual Oskana Cup Aboriginal Youth Hockey Championships held at Regina’s Co-operators Centre. There were 53 youth and 14 adult teams that registered – some came as far as northern Ontario and Manitoba.
Madden Tymchak, 9, from Oakbank, MB was named the MVP of the Oskana Cup Aboriginal Youth Hockey Championships. A member of the Springfield Icehawks team, Tymchak said he was honoured to bring home the title as the MVP in his division.
“It felt amazing because other kids don’t have that opportunity to do that,” he said. “It was fun and cool. I’m taking home the MVP award that looks like an eagle.”
Tymchak has been playing hockey for over five years and loves being able to play the sport that he loves.
“It’s fun to get exercise and stuff,” Tymchak said.
One Nation Warriors team from Manitoba were champions in the novice division. The team coach Jordan Armstrong said this was the One Nation Warrior’s first time travelling out of their province to compete in a tournament and was surprised they won the championship, considering they barely practiced.
“We don’t have practices…basically the tournaments [in Manitoba] is all we got for practices,” said Armstrong. “We just put this team together this winter. We pushed hard to get the championship at the Oskana Cup. It feels pretty exciting seeing all the kids coming together. It was a pretty intense weekend of hockey for the little guys. Just glad we came up on top. The boys worked hard and came together as one to work as a team.”
All the team players come from different corners of Manitoba which made it difficult to gather for practices but Armstrong said the boys worked hard when they gathered for tournaments. It was a fun and memorable experience for the One Nation Warrior’s to not only take the title as novice champions but to enjoy a weekend of playing great hockey.
“Hope to be back next year. We won’t be able to defend the novice title as the boys move up to the atom division. So, we’re going to push hard for the atom championship,” he said.
Shelley M. Lavallee, president of Oskana Minor Hockey Development Inc., said her and organizers have learned a lot in 13 years since the tournament first started.
“We’ve learned something new every year so we’re always constantly refining our rules or the way we do things,” she said. “We did do something special this year though. We decided to add some teams to a few divisions so we added an initiation team a novice and atom team and we called them the Oskana Broncos as a way of honouring the Humboldt Broncos.”
The 13th Annual Oskana Cup Aboriginal Youth Hockey Championships took place on May 4-6, 2018.