In a year when Canada’s Winter Olympic team owned the gold medal podium, Stacey Harper now has a gold medal of her own to proudly wear.
The Ontario Provincial Broomball Championships were held in Barrie over Feb. 12-14, where the Palmay Midget Girls, a combined team of players from Palmerston and Midmay, claimed the gold medal.
The six team double knockout competition began with Mildmay losing 1-0 to the defending champion Eastern Elite, and Blyth defeating Eastern's number two team by a similar 1-0 score. This placed Blyth versus Palmay in round two, where a determined Palmay team knocked Blyth to the B side in a 1-0 final. Stacey Harper was the lone marksman of the game. Eastern Elite met the same result by losing 1-0 to the Windsor Devils.
Tackling Windsor, Palmay started quickly with another Harper goal in the first minute of play. Palmay fought a tight defensive game for the remainder, keeping Windsor off the scoreboard and advancing to the gold medal round.
Meanwhile on the B side, Mildmay was creating their own magic by winning three consecutive games in overtime against Blyth, Elite and Windsor to advance to the gold medal match against their fellow locals.
The two squads were assembled in the fall when there were too many girls registered in Mildmay for one team and not enough in Palmerston. Six from Mildmay slid down the road to join the Palmerston girls and create two equal squads. As it turns out, in the six games they played each other during the season, their records were identical at 2-2-2.
Game one in the Barrie final saw Palmay control much of the play, but not get rewarded. Then, with three short minutes left to play, Mildmay bent the twine to force a second game in the double knockout format.
Palmay regrouped an hour later and, with the assistance of a first half marker by Kelsey Walters, avenged their loss to win the provincial title.