TEAM BC CAPTURES GOLD AT RICHMOND OVAL

BC Floorball’s finest Floorball weekend has come to a close with the Men’s TEAM BC winning the FC CUP for the second year in a row.  On the Women’s side, TEAM ONTARIO retained the FC CUP.

Congratulations to all the Players, Coaches, Referees, Volunteers and Spectators for all your efforts this past weekend.  The Floorball community of Canada came together, in the true spirit of Floorball, and once again, the sport received an incredible amount of interest that will help fuel the growth of Floorball in our Canadian schools and community centers.

The Floorball weekend commenced with an in-depth Workshop/Seminar at the offices of Sport BC on thursday April 16th.  We were extermely fortunate to have the greatest minds of the International Floorball Federation fly in from Helsinki and Bern to conduct the seminar.  Mr. John Liljelund and Mr. Renato Orlando have a deep understanding of sport development and are the ones responsible for getting Floorball recognized by the International Olympic Committee.  Their knowledge combined with their hands-on approach to mentoring Floorball enthusiasts in Canada will help shape the sport in Canada so that we can attain the level of participation in Floorball that is enjoyed by most European countries. It was also interesting to hear how the sport is flourishing in countries like, Singapore, China, Australia, Africa, India, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Nepal, Nicaragua etc…There are very few sports that have all of the positive features of Floorball; affordability, accessibility, gender equality, safety, and spirit.

Mr. Renato Orlando of the IFF at SPORT BC conducting a Seminar for Floorball Canada and BC Floorball

One of the highlights of our nationals floorball weekend was supposed to include a visit from Team India.  They were en route to Vancouver but were refused access in to Canada due to entry visa issues.  The tournament organizing committee had to turn on a dime to fill in key playing time slots and re-arrange a myriad of press and media plans that were scheduled to take place.

For the Men, the games got under way on Friday, playoffs were on Saturday and the gold  medal match was played on Sunday.  Team BC took first in the preliminary round playing Team Quebec in the semi-finals.  After a victory, Team BC was on it’s way to finals to take on second place Team Ontario who had beat Team Alberta in the semis.

The Final match saw Team BC quickly get ahead to a 4-0 lead.  The last period was intense as Team Ontario scored 3 goals to narrow the gap to 4-3.  In the dying seconds, Team Ontario had a flurry of chances from free-hits but would come up short as MVP goalie Christopher Mohn shut the door on any comeback that was looming.

Team Alberta beat Team Quebec to capture third place.

from left to right back row:  Greg Beaudin, Blair Zimmerman, Frederick Ackerman, Arek Prkdsziuk, Greg Rozitis, Johan Hoglund,  Michael Lindgren, Coach-Karl Marits. left to right front row: Sami Valkaama, Denis Metz, Juha Kaitanen, Devan Petterson, Martin Palm, Christopher Mohn, Christian Kortman, Gustav Stahl

Tournament MVP went to BC Goalie Christopher Mohn and the Leading scorer was Greg Rozitis, both from team BC.  On the Women’s side, Team Ontario’s Sonja Hotke was MVP and the the spirit of Floorball award went to BC’s Halimah Basrael.

Special thanks the Referee pair of Vince Faso and Calle Karlsson who came up from the US Floorball Association and to Sotaro Setoguchi who came from Toronto to referee.

Their were so many highlights to the weekend, none bigger than the Richmond Oval itself, The Oval proved to be the most visually stunning and architecturally wondrous gym facility that anyone had ever seen.

The Hilton Richmond was a gracious host Hotel and many thanks to prize donors Floorball Pro and concession host Modern Hockey, the Thomas Haas chocolate bars were a huge hit.

BC Floorball President Greg Beaudin with IFF Secretary General John Liljelund.

From the Organizing team at BC Floorball, we would like to thank everyone for partcipating in this years Nationals weekend, and as the President of Floorball Canada, Randy Sa’d commented “BC has set a new high standard for the Canadian Nationals”

This event was a collaborative effort between Floorball Canada and BC Floorball, and we would like to express our deepest gratitude to Mr John Liljelund, Secretary General of the IFF, along withe Renato Orlando of the IFF for being here with us to help educate our nation about Floorball.