Tyson Endall stood on the bench, counting down the seconds anticipating the celebration that was to come.
Once the buzzer sounded, the Zone 2 team flooded the ice, leaving a yard-sale of gloves and sticks as they revelled in the Alberta Winter Games victory.
For Endall, who had a tough club season in double-A peewee with Chestermere, the victory will be a lifelong memory. He will cherish the medal he received, which is in the shape of Alberta, even if he wasn’t in goal for the final victory.
“I have a lot of participation medals,” Endall said. “This one is better.
“It was exciting. It was a 2-0 game and it was really intense. We were waiting to see what would happen next. We were up 1-0 late in the third period. We didn’t know what was going to happen.
“When we scored with 30 seconds left we were so happy.”
Endall wasn’t the only Chestermere athlete to bring home hardware from the team competitions that took place Feb. 16-19 in Fort McMurray.
Makenna Smith, Kadence Istace and Makenna Summerfeldt won bronze in ringette as part of the Zone 2 team.
Just getting selected to this tournament was a big confidence boost for Endall. There were eight teams and only 16 goalies taken, so being one of the top 16 in the province for players born in 2005.
The team only met for the first time when they boarded the bus to make the trip north, so it was fun for them to see things come together so quickly over the weekend.
The players were all at a tryout camp in the fall but Endall had only formally talked to three others in person after facing them in regular-season games.
“(After tryouts), we got in a group chat that everyone would communicate on,” Endall said. “Once you make the team, we texted each other. You kind of get to know them. After a game, if I was playing their team, then I could text them and we could meet after the game. That’s basically how we communicated with our team.”
At the tournament, the team was secluded, and that meant from the parents as well. They were housed in an elementary school, and the experience was great for the team, even if a motion sensor kept the lights on the entire first night when they were trying to sleep.
The time together really helped build team chemistry.
“They have been planning all kinds of stuff,” said Tyson’s mother Danielle Endall. “It’s crazy how well they all bonded and are still keeping in touch.
“We would basically stand out in the lobby after the game and get a text from the coach telling us if there was going to be parent time or there wasn’t. We saw him very little.”
Tyson was in goal for two roundrobin games, picking up a win over the Zone 8 team from Northern Alberta but taking a loss to Zone 6, which was a team from Edmonton.
Danielle says the team was really supportive of their goalie, while Tyson admits he wasn’t on the top of his game.
“That first game, I was really nervous coming into it,” Tyson said. “I was shaky and not playing my best.
“We still pulled out the win. I was facing harder shots and I didn’t know anyone so I didn’t know what they were going to do or how they play.”
