At a hockey tournament on the Cape earlier this month called the Lobster Pot, two under-eight Martha’s Vineyard Mariner hockey teams brought home first place trophies, in different divisions.
Head coach Joe Merry led the Island’s white team to a back-to-back tournament win after winning last year; and the purple team, headed by coach Chris Scott, won 4-0 in the championship game.
The Lobster Pot Tournament — made famous by small red and white flags attached to vehicles — is a popular Cape Cod youth hockey tournament that has grown into an event that draws up to 70 teams from across Massachusetts and beyond. Founded by Steve Devlin in 1995, the event is hosted every year by the Barnstable Youth Hockey program.
Goalie Robbie Douglas was a force on the ice for the purple Mariner team, staying disciplined and calm in the net, locking it down between the posts for a full three periods to get the shutout in the final. The cherry on top is that the championship was the perfect gift for coach Taylor Ive’s birthday.
“I’m the most proud of our entire team. We had really good passing, good positioning, and they never balled up around the puck; they played phenomenal as a team, they came out with 110%, and they left nothing on the bench,” said head coach Chris Scott.
Each team played three games over the course of Saturday and Sunday. For the purple team, two of the games were in Hyannis on Saturday against Lower Cape and then Franklin, and the championship on Sunday was against Dennis Yarmouth (DY), played at the Falmouth Ice arena.
Scott said they were the underdogs in the Championship game, battling their way to the finals by a thinner margin than DY. On the path to the championship, the U8 white Mariners beat Lower Cape 4-1 and then beat Franklin 4-3 on Saturday.
“D-Y beat those same teams like 9-2 against Lower Cape then 6-1 against Franklin,” said Scott. “We came in on Sunday definitely as the underdogs, but we were both undefeated.”
The win marked extra significance for the under-eight Mariner teams because this was their last time playing together.
“Theres four or five kids moving up to U10’s next year, they wont be playing in U8 bracket anymore, so its the teams last time together,” said Scott. “One of the biggest things about it is, it’s our official last tournament, and we came out on top. We typically hover around second and third place in other tournaments we’ve been in.”
“So to see us develop and take home the lobster pot was incredible,” he added. “I couldn’t have asked for a better group of parents and kids.”
