Kudos to the Shaftesbury Titans for winning the Manitoba High School provincial hockey championships.
No one will ever say the fifth-ranked had an easy path to the title. Not only did they beat the first, third and fourth-ranked teams, the Titans were down 2-0 in the championship game with only 10 minutes remaining.
What was the message to his team late in the third period?
"We had a plan, that we were going to shorten our bench and to keep things simple with our power play", says Miko who has coached the Titans for the past three years. "Our team is such an intelligent group; they have a very high hockey IQ Once we tied at it 2-2 we could feel the momentum swinging our way."
In terms of beating so many higher seeded teams, was it a matter of your team getting hot at the right time?
"Not really," says Coach Mikio. "It was more a matter of us finally having a full roster. Once we had our whole team together, we really started to gel at the right time."
"It kind of felt like the stars were aligning for us," Miko explained. "The situation we were in - going up against higher ranked teams - forced our top players to step up their games and they did."
At what point of the season did you allow yourself to think you had a shot at winning the provincials?
"We always knew we had a good team on paper, and once we had a full roster for the first time this season, we liked our chances. And after we beat St. Mary's, we started to think we had a very real chance of winning it all."
Congratulations to Tom Miko (head coach), Rylan Loeppky (assistant coach), Vivian Curtis (assistant coach and graduated player), Leo Harley (manager) and players Nahanni Baker, Skyla Burns, Brooke Churchill, Lana Cipriano, Sofia DiNicola, Sydney Haggart, Megan Humniski, Mikaela Nimetz, Lola Parkinson, Seanna Price, Lyric Pronger, Lucy Ring, Ellie Ring, Emily Schettler, Sheridan Tait-Rheaume, Maddyn Tyerman, Isla Van de Walle, Kait Yanchishyn and Carlin Zant.
