The Ridge Meadows Minor Hockey Association’s Winter Round Up tournament for novice and atom players saw a local team win gold over the weekend.
The Rustlers atom A3 team finished the round-robin in third place, but beat Langley A4 in the tournament championship.
The atom C tournament final saw Orange County beat the Surrey Falcons, an all-girls team, by a score of 6-5 in the second overtime period.
There were also novice minor and major divisions, where games are played by standings are not kept.
However, the tournament saw a skills challenge that gave all 368 kids on 24 teams a chance to take part in two of the five events.
There events were fastest skater, hardest shot, shooting accuracy, technical skating and breakaway. The latter was the Trulsen Family Breakaway Challenge in honour of the late Noah Trulsen. At some points, there were 400-500 people watching the events at Cam Neely Arena.
“It was a 7.5 hour event that was the highlight of the tournament,” said chairman Tyler Harron.
His son, Queylan Harron, won the novice minor goaltending competition as the top goalie out of eight in the breakaway event.
Sniper Bryson Roberts of the Rustlers atom A3 event won the breakaway challenge, after going seven rounds against a Mission shooter.
Connor Brisbin of the Rustlers atom A3 won the skating skills competition as the fastest through an obstacle course.
There were two other Ridge Mead0ws goaltenders who finished second in the breakaway event and also won awards – Cristiano Pelegrin-Hicks for the atom A3 and Chayse Kazakoff of the novice major.
With the Winter Round Up finished, the Ridge Meadows association will now host its Hometown Heros event which runs from Jan. 2-5 for pee wee and bantam teams. There are teams from across the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island and as far away as Prince George and Portland, Oregon taking part.