By Nathan Kanter

AA Barons success won’t be measured in wins and losses

Nov 3, 2016 | 2:00 PM

The Battlefords bantam AA Barons are still looking for their first win of the season.

They have struggled in the goal scoring department, with just 10 goals this season in six games, and to make things more difficult, recently their new head coach Brett Vestby stepped down because of time commitment issues.

Vestby moved from B.C. to Spiritwood over the summer, but as the recreation director in Spiritwood, his work schedule changed to evenings and all of a sudden he wasn’t able to make practices and would have to miss some games.

Assistant coach Wade Harris took over the head coaching duties, and made it clear that success this year for the Barons won’t be measured in the wins and losses column.

“We have to improve as a team,” Harris said. “The one thing I’m stressing to the kids is you need to believe in yourself and believe that you can play at this level before your team can believe in you so it’s just a matter of time before the kids come together and start believing in what they can accomplish.”

Rustlers Volleyball

Crusaders' Bell excited for next chapter with Lakeland College

14h ago

Nothing but Net

Vikings' standouts ready for national stage with Team Saskatchewan

17h ago

Missing person

Spiritwood RCMP searching for missing woman

20h ago

Harris, whose son Ashton is a forward on the team, noted there is a difficult adjustment for first year bantam AA players for a number of reasons.

First, it’s the first year of body checking for a lot of them, whether they’re coming from peewee AA or bantam house league. At the bantam age, which is 13 and 14-year-olds, there can be a huge size discrepancy, as some kids grow into their bodies much quicker than others. It often translates to mismatches in battles for the puck, and smaller kids can shy away from battling in the corners.

“The thing right now that a lot of them are struggling with is when they’re going for the puck, they’re hesitating a little bit and that little bit of hesitation actually makes you an easier target to hit,” Harris said. “They weren’t playing body contact before and now you’ve got some young kids that are 5’0”, 100 lb. and you’re going against a 6’1”, 180 lb. kid, right? So it’s a huge adjustment.”

It’s also a lot faster, as the Barons play in the Saskatchewan AA Bantam Hockey League, the best league in the province, which boasts two full divisions and 21 teams.

The Barons team this year also returns only three players from last season.

“We’re a really young team,” Harris said. “It’s just going to be a big adjustment to get those kids to compete every shift and go as hard as they can. I’ve noticed last year, my son played on the team, that the first year [when] the kids haven’t played at that level before, it probably takes almost until Christmas for them to adjust. So because we’re so young, you have a period maybe where you have five or 10 minutes of a lapse and in this league that could cost you four or five goals.”

The Barons did have a great game in a tournament in Regina recently, which was a bright spot, as they narrowly fell to the Saskatoon Outlaws, who are currently undefeated in the SBAAHL and in the Barons division.

“For us going in it was going to be a big challenge and the boys played awesome,” Harris said. “Everybody competed very well all game. We had a 3-1 lead and actually ended up losing the game 5-3 but it was a huge moral victory to show that we can compete with a lot of these top teams.”

The Barons played six of 30 games so far this season, after falling to the Saskatoon Stallion last night at the Civic Centre. They have 10 games left before the Christmas break, with the next tilt coming Sunday afternoon at the Warman Legends Centre against the Sask Valley Vipers.  

Nathan Kanter is battlefordsNOW’s sports reporter and voice of the Battlefords North Stars. He can be reached at Nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca or tweet him @NathanKanter11