Juvenile hockey, I believe, is pretty much a forgotten division these days.
Not 50 years ago. Not in the spring of 1976 when a juvenile team from Belleville became the first — and only — minor hockey club from The Friendly City to capture an all-Ontario AAA championship title.
I was a utility player — fourth-liner, spare defenceman (the late great Intelligencer sportswriter Tom Gavey generously described me as a “jack of all trades” in a team profile) — on the Jim’s Pizza Juveniles when our club swept the Burlington Mohawks 4-0 in the best-of-seven OMHA finals in 1976.
I was wearing street clothes by then as our coach, Keith Kaine, shortened the bench for a championship run. But I was allowed to work one of the doors on the bench and, believe me, I was as thrilled as the regulars when the final buzzer sounded to mark the conclusion of Game 4 and we were provincial champs and raised the Roland Michener Trophy.
Sweet.
Looking to wrap up the all-Ontario series in four straight, we travelled to Burlington for Game 4 on Friday, April 10, 1976. Our guys spotted the home team a 2-0 lead, then scored four times unanswered to seal the deal.
Gary Thompson, team captain Roger Chapman, Gordie Male (with the game-winner) and Robb Chase supplied the Belleville goals in the series-clinching Game 4 triumph. Mark Meehan was in net for us.
In the game story that appeared in the next day’s Intelligencer, then sports editor Doug Walsh pointed out that for many guys on our club, this was their last hurrah in minor hockey. Next stop for most was beer-league hockey.
“For several players it was their farewell to juvenile hockey,” wrote Walsh. “And they went out in style.”
They sure did.
Several years later while working as sports editor of the Georgetown Herald in North Halton, I bumped into Mike Brophy, then writing for The Hockey News. Brophy had played on that Burlington team in the ’76 provincial final.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Brophy. “Belleville was the hardest-working team we faced all season.”
I know the boys would be proud to hear that. Happy anniversary, guys.
Members of the 1976 OMHA Juvenile AAA champion Belleville Jim’s Pizza team were: Tom Belch, Tony Bennett, Roger Chapman, Robb Chase, Mike Crawford, Mark Foster, Dave Giddings, Brian Hamilton, Paul Hayman, Marty Lowry, Ross McLeod, Gordie Male, Mark Meehan, John Merrill, Kelvin Pope, Allan Portt, Ray Skelly, Paul Svoboda, Gary Thompson and Mike Willman. Staff: Keith Kaine, coach; Bill Thompson, manager; Howard Skelly, trainer.
NEED TO KNOW: The Jim’s Pizza team’s overall record for the 1975-76 season was 56-6-2.
KINGS COME CLOSE
It wasn’t the Hollywood ending they were hoping for, but helmets off to the Tweed Oil Kings for their recent efforts in pursuit of the Sentinel Cup, emblematic of Eastern Ontario Sr. A supremacy in the Northern Premier Hockey League.
This season’s version of the Oil Kings were attempting to win the NPHL title on the 50th anniversary of the original Tweed BP Oil Kings capturing an all-Ontario banner in 1976. Fifty years ago, the BP Oil Kings defeated the Dresden Lumber Kings 4-1 in the best-of-seven OHA Intermediate C final.
This year, after claiming the NPHL Western Conference playoff championship, a determined Tweed team forced the Sentinel Cup final against the Manotick Mariners to a fifth and deciding contest before dropping a 7-2 decision on the road in Game 5 last weekend.
