Fourth consecutive title for Centre Wellington Falcons
FERGUS – The Centre Wellington Falcons captured their fourth consecutive District 10 high school girls’ hockey championship Tuesday when they rallied to double the Centennial Spartans 4-2 at the Centre Wellington Community Sportsplex.
“Every championship has its special moments and every year is a bit different because you have different girls on the team, different chemistry,” Centre Wellington coach Merf Bauman said. “I think this year we’ve made it through some tough times as a team and persevered and these girls, I’m so proud of them for coming together as a team and overcoming some obstacles. We are very fortunate to have a very skilled club. I don’t know how long this will last, but this team has a special side to it.”
After a scoreless first period, Centennial scored twice in the first 6:17 of the second period before the Falcons came back to lead 3-2 at the end of the second.
“When you’re down 2-0 against Centennial, yeah, that’s a big deal,” Bauman said. “But I also know that our girls can dig in and come back. But of course you don’t want to be down 2-0 in any championship game.”
Centre Wellington added an empty-netter with 1.9 seconds to go to wrap up the scoring.
Catrina Kudo and Kyra Beuttenmiller scored 1:44 apart for Centennial. Assists went to A. Parker and D. Brown.
Hannah Turner and Faith Willmets scored 44 seconds apart to tie the score for Centre Wellington before Avery Peters put the Falcons ahead for good and Campbell Leen netted the final goal. Riley Leslie, Shaylynn Montgomery, Avery Diljee, Ellen Bouwman and Willmets each had an assist.
The Falcons and Spartans account for eight of the last nine league championships with Centennial winning in 2015 and 2016 and Centre Wellington winning in 2015, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2023 and 2024. Ross Royals won in 2018 and there was no league final in either 2021 or 2022 due to the pandemic.
Centre Wellington advances to the six-team CWOSSA AAA tournament at the Activa Sportsplex in Kitchener Monday and Tuesday.
“It’s a good tournament and there’s a lot of good teams,” Bauman said.” We lost to Bluevale last year and I’m sure they have a very similar team and ours is very similar so it’s going to be tough to win that tournament. There’s a lot of good players, so we’re going to have to not only play at our top level every game, we’re going to have to get lucky, if I can put it that way. That’s a part of sports. We’ll be challenged to come through that. We lost last year in the semifinals. Again, it comes back to the experience and just making the best of the opportunity that is in front of you.”
The Falcons are in a pool with the Assumption Lions of Brantford and Elmira Lancers while the other three-team pool consists of the Owen Sound Wolves, Monsignor Doyle Mustangs of Cambridge and Huron Heights Huskies of Kitchener. Monday is for round-robin pool play and top two in each pool advance to Tuesday’s playoff round with semifinals at 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. and the championship match at 1 p.m.
- Guelph Sports Journal