Cambs U11 Mini Hockey Tournament

This was a rather strange tournament, because there were 11 teams playing, so the pools were of 6 and 5, so our pool had to play one more game than the other. Also, St John's centre-forward was 12, because he was held back a year. So he probably shouldn't have been allowed to play since it was a U11 tournament, rather than U12, but I guess he was allowed to play anyway.

Well, we got off to a good start, winning our matches against St. Ives and Cambs City (City have a guy who goes to St. Faiths!)1-0 and 3-0 respectively with Sewelly scoring against St. Ives and Lewis with 2 goals and me with 1 against Cambs city. We then drew against St Johns, and we gave them a jolly good run for their money.

Immediately afterward, we beat City of Peterborough 3-1. Peterborough had a funny formation. They seemed to have 3 in the centre, two wingers and 1 back. Obviously, the midfielders supported the lone defender but it was strange nonetheless.

In the next game against Rackham, we really had a huge load on our shoulders. They had won last year, if we lost we just might not be able to make it to the semis, and they too had a Charlie Fields-type player. We discovered that this guy was better than Charlie. One of the two goals that he scored involved lobbing the ball over our goalie's head and watching it bounce its way in. The game was lost 3-2. In fact, we were leading until their electric midfielder scored his goals. Now all of our hope was on goal differences.

It started to rain furiously when we found out that we had got through and were facing Saffron Walden, the winners of the other pool. We overcame them easily, even though the rain slowed us down. One one occasion, I attempted to hit the ball, but My stick was so slippery that It flew out of my hands and skidded, going farther than the ball itself. Saffron got a free hit for that because it was 'dangerous'. Well, of course it's dangerous but it is nearly impossible to hit the ball properly in the pouring rain!

The finals was a rematch of one of our group stages. Guess who? It was Johns. I won't give you a second by second description and make the suspense of the tournament unbearable, firstly because it might get boring and secondly because there wasn't actually all that much suspense. They beat us and won the trophy. All I can say is, they were lucky to have been able to play their 12 year old. Good luck to them in the regional tournament!