After defeating the St. Paul's Crusaders 2-1 in the AAAA Manitoba High School provincial hockey championships, the Oak Park Raiders are still basking in their glory.
"We're still floating on cloud nine" said coach Ian MacDonald, who teaches English and History at Oak Park.
The provincial crown was sweet revenge for MacDonald. In 2008 when he was playing for Oak Park, the Trojans lost to St. Paul's in both the city finals and the provincials, so coming back all these years and beating the Crusaders for the Manitoba championship was something very special for the head coach.
MacDonald said the championship final was a microcosm of their entire season. "We faced adversity throughout the year and it definitely made us stronger. So when we were down by one goal heading into the third period we were calm because we'd been facing adversity all season."
The Raiders just managed to qualify for the provincials.
"We snuck into the provincials through the wildcard game by scoring late in the third and then the winner in overtime. We just wanted an opportunity to "rattle some cages" in the provincials, and that's exactly what we did" said MacDonald, who has been coaching for 12 years.
"Heading into the third down by a goal we were calm. We knew we had done this before and we said to ourselves Let's do this again!'"
"Our goalie Zach kept us in it" referring to Raiders' goalie Zach Johnson, who made 35 saves, more than double what the St. Paul's goalie faced.
Coach MacDonald also had high praise for his graduating senior players.
"In the championship game our grade 12's were phenomenal. They knew the situation, they knew what had to be done and they left everything on the ice."
Did coach MacDonald even dream of a championship at the beginning of the season, way back in September?
"Heading into the season we knew we had a great core and we knew we had a really good goaltender, so we did have aspirations."
Congratulations to coaches Ian MacDonald, Max Gardiner, Shane Kustra-Nelson, Jake Hruska, Matt Lawrence, Darren Klapak (manager), Jamie Gatta (assistant manager) and of course, the players: Brayden Laarveld, Brendan McDonald, Nate Lodewyks, Jayden Schmidt, Lucan Einarson, Wilton Mullally, Ben Folster, David Sudoski, Luc Turcotte, Carter Van Alstyne, Karsten Ross, Cooper Pistawka, Zach Einarson, Mitchell Fiebelkorn and Zach Johnson.
