South Alberta Hockey Academy heads to Circle K Classic looking for a third straight title

Captain Noah Derouin is from the Medicine Hat area. He said the tournament is an enjoyable experience, but also a lot of hard work.

“Yeah it was really fun,” Derouin said.

“Obviously winning it back to back is a really cool thing, a special thing,” Derouin added.

“But it’s hard having to play six games in six days, so yeah it was pretty hard doing that.”

Assistant Captain Josiah Jackson is from Cypress County. Jackson had quite the tournament last year putting up six points in six games and really got his game going at the event. He said he really started to find his confidence playing at the the event and he likes his teams chances this year.

“I think we are a hard working team so I think teams are really going to have to put on their ‘A’ game if they want to beat us and we are a tough team to play against,” Jackson said.

“So it’s just going to be really hard for some skilled teams to beat us as well,” Jackson added.

Defenseman Julian Laqua who grew up in Orion played some of his minor hockey out of Foremost before playing in the Medicine Hat minor hockey system and then joining SAHA.

He expect their team to be hard to play against especially defensively, and is looking forward to playing in the tournament again this year.

“Yeah it was a really cool experience to win the Circle K Classic last year,” Laqua said.

“Just going into it this year just trying to put our best foot forward you know competing every night and hopefully give ourselves a chance to win this year,” Laqua added.

All three of the returning players were part of the South East Athletic Club Tigers program prior to joining SAHA.

SAHA Coach Brayden Desjardins who won Outstanding Coach of the tournament last year says this is a really big event for the team.

“It’s a really good tournament, obviously for our guys to play on probably the biggest stage you can at U-18,” Desjardins said.

“I would think it’s the biggest U-18 tournament in the world probably, definitely in North America. So to be able to kind of learn to be able to play under that pressure is special,” Desjardins added.

“There is a lot of people watching, obviously the last couple of years we have had a lot of kids move on and commit to junior programs and different things over that term. So it’s been really good.”

“It’s really well run and then with our group this year I think we are going to have a good push. We are playing really good hockey right now.”

Going into the tournament the team has won seven of their last 10 games with an overtime loss also in that mix.

Desjardins said that they are probably playing better hockey right now than they were at this time last year.

For Desjardins and his returning players and staff they will try to relive last years victory. For the new players, they will be looking to have that same experience of raising the Circle K Classic trophy over their heads.

The championship game of the Circle K Classic will be played on New Years Day.

The Circle K Classic has some of the top U-18 AAA hockey teams in North America and even Team Hungary out of Europe playing at the tournament.

Following along with the teams schedule on the Circle K Classic website.

by Jesse Gill

South Alberta Hockey Academy heads to Circle K Classic looking for a third straight title

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