Hong Kong Children's Ice Hockey Tournament 2000
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Hong Kong Kids Write-up

May 15th, 2000

The Beijing Community Sports and Recreation club’s first ice hockey tour can be hailed as a great success. 36 players on 3 teams, along with 4 coaches and 28 parents and relatives, flew down to Hong Kong for Asiasport’s Dragon Center 5’s Ice Hockey Tournament. The Beijing teams were chosen as all-stars from the Beijing Community Sports and Recreation Hockey School.  Players represented a number of Beijing Schools including the International School of Beijing, The Western Academy, The German School, The Russian School and Yew Chong BIS. The Dragon Center 5’s tournament is Asia’s premier hockey tournament, with over 18 youth teams participating from Hong Kong, Singapore, Abu Dabi, Manila, and of course Beijing .

Before departure at the airport, the brand new all-star jerseys were distributed, and a happy army of little red soldiers with white stars on their fronts marched through check-in and customs, only to wait nearly three hours for the Dragon Air flight to depart for Hong Kong. Entertained by the moving walkways of the new terminal, and Duty Free shopping, the delay passed quickly. Excitement filled the players as they invaded the central portion of the plane for the 3-hour flight.  Arriving in Hong Kong well after midnight, it was  2:30am by the time the hockey bags were finally lugged into hotel rooms in Kowloon.

Just 2 hours later , The Squirts (9 and under) and Pee Wees (10-12 years) and coaches Helen Froelich, Ray Plummer, Justin Bedard and Jim Accurso rose to the 4:30am wake-up calls, and taxied to the Dragon Center for 6am and 7am games versus Hong Kong and Manila. The Squirts lost but the Peewees were victorious with a 3-0 shutout. Joey Googel played goalie for that game. After only an hour break, the Peewees were back out on the ice against Hong Kong and won again by shut-out with a score of 1-0. This time in net was Australian, Alexander Horenko. Joey Googel scored the only goal of the game. 

With so many games, and so many goals, in so few days the games started to blur after the first few hours.  Ted Ko, the squirt goalie, stepped up and manned the net for the Pee Wee division as well.  That allowed for Joey Googel and Alexander Horenko to play together.  The Pee-Wees won all but one game in Hong Kong.  They suffered a loss in their last game of the tournament to Hong Kong leaving them with a 3^rd place standing in the tournament. Russians Sasha Belyev and Alex Klimov were a force in the Pee Wee division and came equipped with their own elder brother translator. Jeff Lam and David Bystrom played with older kids for the first time and held their own without any problem.  Laurence Chen and Jackson and Huey Cheng and Felix Opletal were part of this powerful Pee Wee team as well. 

The Squirts and Midgets did not fair quite as well in the standings.  They brought home trophies for 4^th and 6^th place respectively.  While the opposition was quite a challenge, it was eye-opening for those who traveled to see how good children’s hockey has gotten around Asia.  Goals in the squirt division were scored by Jordan Afuie, John Manicom, Alex Chan, Lewis Horenko and Eric Chamarro. They where helped out by the rest of the squirt forces: John Kauffman, Pontus Kilander, Alex Rawding, Fredrick Bystrom, James Accurso, Sean Harsha, and John Lam.

Goals in the Midget division were scored by Steve Dockstader, Oliver Fenwick-Ross, and Joey Googel. The midgets held their own on defense with stong pairs of Kelsey Googel with Lorenzo Suding and Steve Docksteder with Charlott Opletal.  Andei Horenko and Giorgio Orlandi were versatile playing both forward and defense and brought size and speed to an already strong power-play and man down line. Home-Schooled Canadian goaltender for the Midgets, Becky Crahnam, took a battery of shots from opposing teams throughout the weekend.  She made her share of hockey card saves and kept a smile on her face even when the odds where grim.  And the Joey Googel, Alexsander Horenko pair found the energy to play in the Pee Wee and Midget division, helping out their older siblings in their time of need. Tyler Zwada, Chun Man Fong, Christian Chamarro, and Jason Parno added depth to this team.

In each division, individual awards were given to outstanding players in the tournament. Beijing’s own Ted Ko (WAB) was a awarded “Best Goalie” of the squirt division.  He was given an enormous dragon trophy and even got to say a few words to the entire crowd.  We were all very proud of him!! Beijing was also commended for having by far the most international teams on the rosters.  We were the only teams speaking 5 languages on the bench.

For Coach Helen Froelich, another highlight of the weekend was the Friday night women’s exhibition game.  8 women from Hong Kong spit forces.  One side picked up all of Beijing’s women and the other women from Abu Dabi and Singapore.  While the team with Beijing’s women lost 2-4, those two goals were scored by Kelsey Googel with an assist from Helen Froelich and by Helen Froelich assisted by Kelsey Googel.  Charlott Opletal was a constant force on defense and Beckey Cranham tended goal.  For most of the goals against, Beijing’s women were not on the ice!  All of the Beijing girls had a blast!

Special thanks to Justin Bedard,  Jim Accurso, and Ray Plummer for coaching and looking after the teams while in Hong Kong. To Correne Horenko for designing and coordinating the purchase of this year’s all-star jerseys and for being a guiding light on our tour. To John Kauffman Sr. and Stan Harsha for looking after the parentless squirts. And to Rob Googel for dressing the goalies, and encouraging the coaches throughout the weekend.

By Helen Froelich, BCSRC

Click for Photo Album 1

Click for Photo Album 2