There were eight championship banners won this past season celebrating the accomplishments of the Yorkton Minor Hockey Association.
Three of those banners were to commemorate championships won under the Saskatchewan Hockey Association (SHA).
Two Pee Wee teams and one Bantam team achieved them.
"I was pretty surprised at the provincial winners," said Gina Flett immediately following the last games for the three teams.
The executive director for Yorkton Minor Hockey went on to explain that something like this doesn't happen every year.
"It's not very often three provincial banners go to the same organization."
PEE WEE 'A'
Kelly Maddin's Pee Wee 'A' Terriers started out in a two-game matchup with the LaRonge Wolves and won handily.
He said the winnings, not just for his team, but for the two that follow in this review, are a good sign for the YMHA.
"Yorkton is well established in minor hockey. The competition is definitely there (too)."
His team played six games through SHA provincials and won all six.
"They gelled. They became a team. It was good." That sent them to their next opponent, the Battlefords Barons. Again, Yorkton won both.
Then they played Moosomin in the SHA finals.
Maddin said Moosomin was by far the best they had played against.
Moosomin had knocked off Weyburn and Estevan to make it to play Yorkton in the finals. This year's victory made it back-to-back provincial rings for Maddin.
Two years prior to that, he won with Atom Tier II and before that, with a Novice team. "It was a good group of kids."
PEE WEE 'AA'
Ed Zawatsky's Pee Wee 'AA' Terriers played the Prairie Storm then played Prince Albert and won 9-3.
Zawatsky coached the team to the final, shortly after coaching the team to a South Saskatchewan Minor Hockey League championship about two weeks earlier.
"For me, I'm a coach, and on the minor hockey board. I had a good talk with Kelly (Maddin)," explains Zawatsky about putting together a Tier I Atom team.
"They made a decision (to implement it)."
The results show you," he insists.
The only news they can't be thrilled about is that 10 of the players he coached this season are expected to move up the ranks for next season.
According to coach Zawatsky, they are going to have a lot of experience playing in big games.
"Six kids have won four league championships."
For this team, their first loss of the season came on Jan. 29.
Despite the experience, Zawatsky told YTW it doesn't guarantee any kind of future success when next season comes around.
"Minor hockey's always changing," he said, sounding like an oracle.
"But the whole program showed pretty strong."
It's a credit to the kids."
The Pee Wee 'AA' players won seven games in their provincial run, losing only one game in Estevan.
BANTAM 'A'
Ryan Arnold an Evan Johnson got their Bantam 'A squad past Weyburn in the opening series and won two games.
Then they got past Estevan in two games.
In the finals, they beat the Battlefords in two games.
The SHS Provincial win was the first for Arnold, who said that once the SHA playdowns got underway, the feeling was there "that we'd have a competitive team".
The boys showed determination."
The road to the SHA was a long one, he said. Road trips took the team down south to Weyburn then down farther to Estevan. Then they went back north as far as North Battleford, whom they met in the final.
"It's a lot of travelling," observed Arnold following the YMHA annual awards banquet.
Arnold mentioned that the team was a 'combination' team including players from two different minor hockey clubs based out of Yorkton.
The DR Auto Extras and the Quizno's Subs teams both had players on the SHA provincial team.
Arnold added that this team had tryouts in December and they were given three free practices to get ready for their provincial games.
Arnold said it wasn't his idea initially to become the coach.
"I was asked to coach," he pleaded, before adding that "Trevor Plews spearheaded the whole team."
