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I know. This is corny, but then again so is this whole web site. But everywhere you look someone is doing their year-end, decade-end, century-end or millenium-end lists, so why not us? |
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Number 2 - 1997 Garden State Games Number 3 - Blackhawks - Skates game at the Continental Airlines Arena - July 1996 Number 4 - Blackhawks 4 - Jets 3 Number 5 - Fall 1999 Allaire Championships. Number 6 - Fall 1996 Jackson Championships Number 7 - September 1998 - 10-U Blackhawks win the New York NHL Breakout. Number 8 - July 1998 - 14-U Blackhawks win the Philadelphia NHL Breakout. Number 9 - 14-U Blackhawks compete in Disney's Inaugural Inline Hockey Challenge. Number 10 - Key West scrimmage with the Southernmost Hockey team Honorable Mention
Super Sports Center, Philadelphia Pa. - Presidents Day Tournament - February 1997. 8-U Champions and 12-U Champions The 12-U team just finished watching the 8-U team dominate the competition and win their championship. The 8-U team lead by Adam Houli and Ed Miccuillis offense went undefeated as they dominated the competition. The 12-U team was not so lucky. We were in the midst of a war. After playing some physical "street" hockey games that resembled football and NHL Hockey we found ourselves playing in the championship game against the 1996 Regional Champions. We played them twice already and they beat us both times (on the score board and physically). They were tough. They held a 3-0 lead going into the last period, but the Blackhawks inspired by Bill Smith's famous "Lexus" speech, came back to win 6 to 3. While holding that lead late in the game Frankie was taken out by a very dirty cross chec, in front of the referee. No call was made. A lot of Philly Middle fingers were raised towards us and a lot of yelling occured. We held on to win our most emotional tournament ever. After the tournament we found out the referee was also their coach.
Garden State Games - July 1997The 12-U team Silver Medal We played and watched some emotional games in the Southern New Jersey qualifier. As the final game of the afternoon got underway, we found ourselves rooting for team A (I forget their name). If they won the game, we would be the South Jersey Champions. As the game ended, team A held a commanding lead. We realized that we were about to become the South Jersey Champion and we went nuts What an emotional moment that was. The Blackhawks qualified as the South Jersey champion and representative in the Gold medal game. A week later, we played defending champion Montvale in the Gold Medal game. It turned out to be a close game but we were really excited to win the Silver Medal.
Blackhawks - Skates game at the Continental Airlines Arena - July 1996We rented the Continental Airlines Arena prior to a Rockin' Rollers game twice. This was our first visit and it was the best. As we took the floor of the arena and had the chance to look out into the stands it was awesome. Rich and John put on their skates and skated around with the kids. Sittling on the Devils bench and looking up into the rafters and seeing the Stanley Cup banner from the Devils point of view was a great moment. Seeing our name on the scoreboard, getting dressed in the locker room. Wow. Mike Fasano played awesome in goal. Probably his best game ever as we faced an older Skates team (We were aware they snuck in older players, but we didn't care. Eric Kleinberg scored our only goal in the 3-1 loss. We felt bad that Walt missed this moment because he was away on business.
Blackhawks 4 - Jets 3. In the summer of 1995 we entered a team into the NJ Inline Hockey League in Brick. We started the team here becuase Frankie, Tommy and Victor had developed a friendship and wanted to play hockey together. We invited a bunch of our Devil and Penguin teammates to join us and we had lots of fun. Little did we know how succesful we would be. The greatest moment of the summer came in a game against the Jets. Six games into the season we played them and we were literally fighting for first place. This was the week that the Blackhawk attitude was established. It was us against everyone else, and it has been that way since this game. At one point, we were losing 3 to 1. But what was important was the lack of calls being made. We had players being bounced all over the place. When we complained to the officials a parent from the other team (who happened to be the father of an NHL player) told us to shut up, Hockey is a rough sport. The kids fought hard and battled back to take the lead. After we took the lead, Donnie Bielak was clotheslined by Milos (who we got to meet again in Jackson and Toms River). As we were catering to Donnie, we heard a lot of "GO BACK TO HOWELL" yells from the parents. After a heated exchange among the adults everything calmed down, but a definate us against them bond developed on the bench. Our next pregame chant was not "BLACKHAWKS". It was changed to "HOWELL BLACKHAWKS", thus the Howell Blackhawks Hockey Club was born.
Fall 1999 Allaire Championships.12-U Champions - 8-U Champions After losing 10 straight games to the Roadrunners over 3 years, we beat them to win the 12-U Fall 1999 championship in our first season in Allaire. After not playing them since they left Jackson 1-1/2 years ago we played a great game against them earlier in the season losing 1-0. That made it 10 straight losses to them. When we entered the team in Allaire, it was with the goal of winning this game against the Roadrunners. The players, parents and coaches focused on this game and we all hoped to make it here. We made it. We won it. And it was thrilling. Not to be outdone, the 8-U Blackhawks won their first league championship in their third season. The 'little guys' have only existed for three seasons, but they have already played in two championship games. This season they DOMINATED their opponents. We have had some great teams in the past but, this team had the greatest GOALS FOR to GOALS AGAINST ratio of any team.
Fall 1996 Jackson Championships14-U Champions - 11-U Champions The 11-U team won their second straight championship by defeating the Islanders 3 to 1 in the finals. Our team captain played the game with what turned out to be pheunmonia. We were nervous about the game, but the rest of the team stepped up to pick up the slack. We advanced to the finals by winning the semi-final game in a shootout. This was our second straight undefeated season. It took a while to see it, but this championship team was featured in USA Hockey Magazine as the "Team of the Week" in the summer of 1997. Our 14-U team won the league championship in their first season together in Jackson. We won the game against a much bigger Fireballs team in a shootout. Our much smaller players were motivated by being called Smurfs by the Fireballs. It really did fire the kids up. We took everyone by surprise (including ourselves) by having our third line being our most productive line. That line was made up of a 10-year-old, an 11-year-old and three 12-year-olds, that had played for us in the past. Says a lot about teamwork, and "The Blackhawks attitude".
After winning the Philadelphia Breakout with ease, the 10-U's had a tough weekend in Rye. They went 3-1 in regulation play and found themselves in a must win game to advance to the finals. The team stepped up to meet this challenge in typical dominating style by winning the game 9-1. In this game Tommy Heslin got three penalties to go with his only career Hat Trick. The penalties and the goals fired up the other team as they taunted him after the game. The Championship game started and the Blackhawks found themselves in an early 2-0 hole. And their opponents from the previous game were now taunting them from the sidelines. It didn't look good for the Blackhawks when all of a sudden the offense exploded. Mike Walsh lead the attack as he scored a hat trick. Eddie and Kirk Brancato helped shut the door on this one. Mike Costa was the key to the team as he played great in goal. This was a great weekend for the Blackhawks. We had three teams compete this weekend. The 14-U lost the championship game in overtime. The 12-U team lost the semi-final game in a shootout.
We spent a week "destroying" Disney World and we found time to play some hockey. We went 3-0 in Group A to win the group easily. In fact all 4 group winners went undfeated, so the playoff seeding had to come down to Goals Against then Goals for. We were seeded third in the playoffs. We only gave up 4 goals, so we could only imagine how good the other teams had to be to give up less than 4 goals. In the playoffs we faced the National Champions WSI Extreme. They beat us with ease, and when Victor scored our only goal, he paid for it with the hardest cross check I have seen in roller hockey. In the consolation game we fell behind 4-0 early. Then Victor scored three quick goals to close the gap. Unfortunately, we ran out of gas before we could tie the game. We were thrilled to play on the National level and finish fourth out of 16 teams.
What a great time we had. We played hockey on a rink lined with palm trees located 100 yards from the ocean. We had a great time playing with some new friends. After the game we celebrated with a few games of laser tag. On the way back to the hotel, the boys "fell in love" with a "really hot woman".....It took a couple passes to prove that it was really a guy. Ahhhhhh. Only in Key West. The Blackhawks were the combination of the 9-U Devils and the 12-U Penguins from Howell Hockeys first two seasons, so our history actually stretches back to the fall of 1994. During that fall season, the Penguins (coached by John Scotto and Rich Cerbone) won their division championship. In the next game the Devils (coached by Rich Cerbone and Frank Heslin) defeated the Flyers to win their division championship. This was a thrilling game that saw Billy Smith put the Devils ahead with 14 seconds to go. On the next faceoff the Flyers tied the game and sent it into overtime. Alex Cerbone scored the game winner. This was our first experience in hockey and we were already winning championships (and making "friends"). We also realized that you needed a good goalie (Dominic Pensabene), teamwork, passing and defense to be succesful. |
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