Silver linings

My ringette team participated in our first tournament of the season this weekend, playing against other provincial teams in the Maritime region. The tournament takes place every year in Miramichi (about three hours away from home), and let's just say our record in past years has not been stellar. We usually come fourth.. out of four teams. In any case, I left history class a few minutes early on Friday, hopped in the car, and drove straight to Miramichi, getting there just in time for our first game at 7:05. We worked hard, but we lost by the entire seven goal spread (in ringette, only up to a seven-goal difference is put up on the scoreboard, and at that point it goes into running time. If the team with less points scores, another of the leading team's points will be displayed on the scoreboard. If that goal causes it to become less than a seven goal spread, the game returns to stopped time). As much of a humiliating defeat our first game was, that team was the hardest in the tournament, and we remained optimistic that we could make a comeback. And that we did. The next day we defeated our opponents by the full seven goal spread, and I even scored the first goal of the game on a great cross-crease pass from my forward partner. I got a few assists too, although my biggest role was in forechecking. After that high, we went into our second game of the day too cocky. By ten minutes in the score was 3-0 for our opponents, and we just didn't seem to be able to pick up our passes. We were starting to get a bit panicked, but then I returned the favour from the previous game and shot my partner a nice cross-crease, and she scored, making it 3-1. Then our team scored again. And again. And again, and we were in the lead. The game wasn't as solid as our first that day, but even after that rocky start we managed to scrape up a 12-7 win (yours truly didn't get any goals, but she did end up in the box for a four-minute double penalty. Oops). With our 2-1 record we made it to the championship game against our heated adversary: the team we were creamed by in our first game. We all were super pumped up before the game, sitting in the dressing room, listening to "300 Violin Orchestra" and our coach's pre-game spiel. We were ready to take them on, ready to turn the tables and claim victory. The game started, and they scored. Again. And again. And again. And for our part, we got penalty after penalty and poor call after poor call. The refs, in all seriousness and with not an ounce of hyperbole, patted some of the opposing team on the head and gave them high fives after they scored. At one point we had three girls in the box, and the referee gave the ring to the other team when it should have been ours, and when our coach tried to talk to him, he said that he would only speak to a captain. Our coach pointed out that the ref had already put all our captains in the penalty box (on bogus calls, I might add), and the ref shrugged and said, "Well, that's too bad". Suffice to say, this is not the story of how the underdogs overcame adversity, defeated the cocky, obnoxious favourites, and won the day. This story ends with us creamed 1-25 (although, thanks to the seven-goal spread, the marginally less humiliating 1-8 was the official score). I guess that's how the underdog/favourite story usually ends when you're not in the running for the best picture Oscar.  While it's not easy to tell from my bellyaching, the tournament went phenomenally for us.  Our team won the silver medal, something I don't think a team from here has ever done before in this tournament.  I personally have been improving a lot; being sixteen years old in a U-19 provincial tournament and competing against the best first year university players isn't exactly the easiest situation to be in, but we still came out second-to-one. We'll see this team again at Nationals, and others that are just as tough, but we are going to work hard, improve, (maybe with a rock-fueled training montage), and by the time this season is over we'll be the odds-defeating underdogs Hollywood has been training us since birth to be.