Junior Spitfires look to continue their ‘last hurrah’
Windsor club off to regional tourney with shot at Telus Cup nationals on line
It’s all new territory for the Windsor Junior Spitfires Zone AAA midget team.
The club’s first Alliance championship will send the team to Sudbury for the Telus Cup Central Regional Championship, which starts on Monday, with a chance to move on to the national tournament.
“It’s huge and we’ve been shooting for this every year,” said Windsor head coach Kyle Makaric, who is in his fourth season with the team. “We’ve won the regular season three years in a row, it’s the second time we’ve been to the final, we’ve won the Silver Sticks twice in the last four years, but this is the one we’ve been missing.”
A dozen players on this team were part of last year’s Windsor club that qualified for the minor midget OHL Cup for the first time since 2007.
“We’re a successful group,” said Windsor captain Gianluca Pizzuto, who was captain of last year’s OHL Cup team. “We know how to win, we like winning and we crave winning.”
It’s a credit to Makaric and his staff for keeping a good chunk of this team together. Usually, when a player is not drafted by an OHL club, he will look to move on to play elsewhere.
“When I first came in and called the kids to come, it wasn’t even a thing they thought of,” Makaric said. “It was only junior hockey and if not, ‘What do I do? Do I go and play AA with my friends? Why play AAA again?’ I think the success we’ve had and developed kids to be impact players.”
Pizzuto looked to make the jump, but quickly decided to return to the program for another year.
“I tried out for a bunch of junior teams and made it pretty far, but didn’t end up making it and so I just came back here,” the 17-yearold Pizzuto said. “I signed on early and it’s been a lot of fun. Better than I ever imagined.”
A few additions from Sun County, one from AA and a couple from Chatham have now made the Windsor club a powerhouse that went 26-6-1-2 in the regular season.
“We all wanted to come back and play our major midget year,” said Windsor’s Jake Bailey, who was also on that OHL Cup team a year ago. “We only had a few guys drafted and a bunch to come back and play because it would be a really good team.
“We’ve all got some pretty good chemistry and even more chemistry with the new guys.”
Windsor swept Cambridge in three games in the quarter-finals and added another three-game sweep over Huron-Perth in the semis before needing six games to take out Brantford in the best-ofseven final.
“It says a lot about them,” Makaric said. “It’s tough when you think of what they’re doing coming back for an extra year in minor hockey when the easier route might be jumping to a junior C team. It’s a lot cheaper for sure.
“What it says is they’re trying to work at their game with their peers one more time.” The players have no regrets. “It’s good we came back,” the 16-year-old Bailey said. “I’m really excited about this. We want to try and win. It’s going to be our last hurrah as a team and it will be sad when it comes to an end, but we want to keep playing with each other as long as we can.”
The six teams will play each other once in a round robin format. The top four teams advance to the semifinals with the winners playing in the final and the champion moving on to the national tournament.
“It’s still surreal for us,” Pizzuto said. “We’ll take it one step at a time, but it’s our goal and it’s realistic now. We just want to get to the final four and go from there.”