Give me hills to
climb,
And strength for
climbing!
This closing verse
of a poem by Arthur Guiterman seemed appropriate to me at the end of the PeeWee
Highlanders game this week against the Burlington Eagles. The final score was
10 -2 in favour of the Eagles and for most of the game it was 1-0, 2-0, 3-0,
4-0 etc. The final result was the same as the first two games of the season
which saw the Highlanders lose 4-1 to the Halton Hurricanes, and 7-6 to Brampton.
So why does this verse about climbing hills seem appropriate? Well, I think the lines speak to how people, in this case our young Highlanders, adapt to challenge.
In the last two games, hills has been presented to this team and in each case they have shown the strength to start climbing. Against Brampton after leading 4-1 , then losing the lead to 6-5 , then giving up an empty net goal to make it 7-5, our young team found the strength to try one more time to climb that hill. We scored and lost but still showed the strength for climbing.
Against Burlington, after falling behind 8-0, the team dug their skates in and tried climbing again. The penalty killing started to show promise, as did the team breakouts, and they were rewarded with two strong goals and a very evenly played third period. The final result was a loss but the PeeWee Highlanders kept climbing. I am sure that the PeeWee Highlanders will continue to show the fortitude to meet any challenge presented and I look forward to writing about this weekend’s doubleheader against Buffalo.
In closing, I thought while driving home from Chesley that I would write my own poem to salute our team. Well it’s a long drive and I ended up with a haiku, which is a Japanese poem composed of 17 syllables, in three phrases of 5, 7 and 5 , and a seasonal reference. I will try not to be so arty next time, perhaps more athletically focused.
Here goes…
Grey Bruce Highlander
Winter brings pain and glory
Together we grow
Ciao for niao.
Article written by Brent Alderdice