U12’s Recap on Successful Season…

Posted on June 22, 2008 at 5:23 pm by Gareth Dorrian

Northern Cyclones Under 12’s Look Back on a successful season that saw them lift both the NIIHA Under 12’s League Title and Playoff Title., as well as most recently the Totem Cup. With the age of the players involved in the Club being from 7 to 12 years old , it has proved that with some good quality coaching and a lot of hard work anything is possible. (Alex Craig missing from above photo.)

All 19 players associated with the Club contributed to the cause over the past season of having fun , working hard , listening to the coaches and finally tasting a bit of success. In the whole of the league season they only lost one game and managed to score a total of 44goals and only conceded 25. One of the Cyclones players was even voted League MVP (most valuable player)

The Junior Cyclones trophy cabinet(it is also shared with the senior team) is starting to strain under the weight of the silverware in it and planning permission might have to be applied for ,in order to make it larger.

The hard work and playing for fun ethic came to the fore when in January of this year three of the players attended the BIPHA Great Britain trials in Deeside Wales and showed exactly what Northern Ireland based players have to offer, in fact they impressed the Great Britain coaching staff so much that all three were picked to be part of the Team GB setup for the forth coming AAU Junior Olympics in Philadelphia. Unfortunately due to previous engagements only one of the boys will be travelling to Philadelphia as part of Team GB and he will be Northern Ireland’s sole representative and also the first ever player under 16 years of age to wear the Great Britain shirt.

The Junior Cyclones head coach James Glover was recently recognized at the North Down Sports Awards for all his hard work with the kids as he was presented with the Young Volunteer of the Year award.

As a family orientated Club the Cyclones are still finding their feet within the sport of Inline hockey and are looking forward to entering teams at other age groups next season to help with the growth of the sport within Northern Ireland. Already teams from across the rest of the United Kingdom have expressed interest in wanting to come across and play in Bangor and hopefully within the next few weeks the Cyclones will be able to announce more details.

So in moving forward anyone wanting to find out more information or even take a look at this growing sport , why not come down on a Saturday 12noon till 2pm to Indoor Arena next to Kidz Club just off the Clandeboye Road (we are closing for the month of July due to holidays) . We will back in training in August.