Firstly, an huge congratulations to the Clarenville High Cougars on winning the Boyle Cup Trophy for 2024 yesterday. Your team played exceptionally well in all games and it was well deserved award. It is pretty amazing that you have won 2 years in a row. Your players and coaches names will now be added with a sliver plaque to Boyle Cup and placed back on display at the Rooms for all to view with teams from 1903 to now 2024 on it. Right there with the words ‘God Guard thee Windswept Land’ as Sir Cavendish Boyle also wrote the Ode to Newfoundland and donated this prestigious trophy back in his day. The Boyle celebrates 121 years of Newfoundland Labrador hockey history. It was great to see so many teams getting photos with the trophy on Friday night.

Secondly, an extra special thank-you to all the players, coaches and families from Deer Lake Elwood High Lakers for making the trek across the island for your first time participating in the tournament. We had lots of great positive comments from lots of coaches and parents confirming it was great to have you all at the tournament competing. The Boyle Cup Tournament is truly now a provincial tournament and everyone commented on how competitive it with so many great close games coming down to the last seconds of each game.

Thanks for all your feedback. We know how we can make the tournament that much better in 2025. We will alot 2 hours per game for next season. Or build in half an hour extra time slots in between games to keep the games on schedule. We may look for a 2^nd ice surface and do games simultaneously as well (as we did for 2 games and changed them last minute). We hope that the Team Snap Tournaments App kept everyone informed as with standings. We know it would have been great to have the canteen open at least on Friday and Saturday so we are looking into that for next year as well.

We can’t thank both Christian at Metro Officials and Fred Slade from Clarenville enough for their great job at organizing our Referees and Linesmen. It is not an easy job to cover 33 games over a 7 day period with so many games all in a row on Friday and Saturday. For such a large tournament with 12 teams, we had very little instances of on ice foolishness and they kept our games on time and in order.

A huge thank you to DF Barnes and Avalon Celtics– Mark Sexton, Justin Clark, and Ice Attendants Ward and Jimmy for doing such a great job with helping with the schedule and in keeping the ice in such great shape. DF Barnes always gets great compliments on how good the ice is to play and it really shows.

Thanks so much to all our hockey parents, grand-parents, families and friends from each and every team for the entire tournament. The fans watching the games were stellar! It was great to see so many come out to support and watch each and every game and it made such a great atmosphere in the rink.

And finally, thanks so much to all the players and coaches and team managers. We had an exceptional group of 12 teams and it showed. It was great to see the camaraderie between teams and each team shaking hands after each and every game. What great sportsmanship. This tournament was a pleasure to host and we are already planning the dates for next years tournament.

As we have so many competitive teams in Tier 2 across the island, we have one request. If it is at all possible, try and reserve ice for hosting your own tournament in 2024/2025 season and let the tier 2 teams know the dates in advance. For example, I was speaking with Deer Lake and they can get ice time in Rocky Harbour perhaps for a tournament. Awesome, sign us up! If we know in advance we can easily plan around these weekends. Looking forward to seeing more Tier 2 tournaments throughout the hockey season allowing more high schools more competitive games all around. The players love playing competitive high school hockey and it is great to see!

Wishing you all a great end to the 2024 hockey season and looking forward to hearing from you in the summer/fall planning more hockey for all our players.

Michael Holden

Manager St. Bon’s High School Team