You Are Never Too Old to Battle - Over 50 Superseries

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For two days in November, 6 teams full of players, the founding fathers, the ones who have been around since the inception of the great sport of ball hockey, came together at the Ballhockey.com Athletic Centre in St.Catharines, ON to compete in the 2018 Ballhockey.com Over 50 Superseries Tournament. The Niagara region hosted many players from the local area as well as Barrie & Toronto and players from our neighbors to the south down in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

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This wasn’t a tournament that was to be taken lightly by anyone competing. Everyone brought teams down who wanted to leave with the title. The competition was one of the tightest fought events in our history with 11 out of the 14 games played being decided by 2 goals or less.

The Wanderers, were the only team that went undefeated in the round robin portion to get the bye to the Semis by beating Barrie 6-4, and both the USA Founding Fathers and Withrow Park Knights 3 to 2 to take the top seed.

A strong Barrie team took the second seed going 2-1 including the loss to the Wanderers and pulling out a 4-2 win over New Tec Xtreme and a close game against the USA Founding Fathers 2 to 1 to get the other bye to the Semifinals.

Withrow Park Knights always bring a strong squad and this year was no different. Also finishing 2-1 in round robin with a 4-2 opening win over New Tec followed by a 3-2 win over the host, Team Niagara, 3-2. The finished the round out with a loss to the Wanderers to get the 3rd seed heading into the elimination games.

The host team, Team Niagara, had 2 hard fought games against the Knights (3-2 loss) and the USA Founding Fathers (5-3 loss) in front of the home crowd before gelling and handing New Tec Xtreme the most lopsided defeat in the tournament 5-0 to finish 4th.

The USA Founding Fathers, opened up the tournament winning the first game 5-3 over Niagara before dropping their next two games by 1 goal to The Wanderers and Barrie landing them the 5th seed.

New Tec Xtreme had a tough go this time around and dropped all 3 of their games in the round robin and finished in the final spot to head to the Quarterfinals.

The Quarterfinals were set with Withrow Park taking on New Tec and Team Niagara facing USA Founding Fathers. New Tec fought hard against the Knights but fell just short losing 4-3 to end their tournament meaning that Barrie would take on the Knights in the first Semifinal. Team Niagara just couldn’t keep up with the Fathers who really started rolling in the elimination games with USA coming out with the 5-2 win setting up a rematch with The Wanderers in the other Semifinal match.

The Founding Fathers kept their momentum going and got revenge on The Wanderers, handing them their first loss of the event and sending them home early with a 6-3 win while Barrie and Withrow Park had a battle to decide the other finalist with the Knights edging out Barrie 3-2 to move on.

The finals were set and in typical hockey fashion, it was Canada-US rivalry game. The finals proved to be a battle with neither team wanting to lose to title. In one of the best games of the tourney, Withrow Park Knights were able to stop the charging USA Founding Fathers team winning 5 to 3 to take home the Over 50 Superseries championship.