The Merritt Fountain Tire atom development team took first place at a Tier 2 tournament in Vernon on the weekend.

The local atom squad, which is coached by John Graham, Chris Charters and Peter Schmid, downed a strong Arbutus club from Vancouver 6-2 in the final.

The Merritt victory in the championship game avenged an earlier 9-2 loss to the same Arbutus team during round-robin play.

The Fountain Tire atoms got to the gold medal game with wins over Port Coquitlam (5-4) and North Okanagan (15-7).

Leading the Merritt scoring parade at the two-day Vernon tournament was Max Graham with 15 goals. Cortez Charters had five tallies, Robert Sterling three, Wyatt Smith a pair, and Preston Laupitz, Karson Peat and Lucas Schmid one apiece. Each of the above also chipped in with one or more assists.

The winning netminders for Merritt were Manjot Panghli and Nathan Willey.
Peewee Rep

Closer to home, the Merritt Ramada Inn peewee reps finished fifth at their own nine-team tournament on the weekend.

The local peewees opened the three-day tournament with a hard-fought 5-5 tie on Friday against their league rivals from Penticton.

Saturday morning, Merritt’s peewees fell 7-5 to the eventual champions from Vanderhoof, but rebounded to win 8-0 over Salmon Arm in their afternoon outing.

Merritt closed out the tournament on Sunday with an 8-3 victory against Surrey.

Merritt scorers were Spencer Vaughan (7 goals) and Talon Zakall (6), Breanna Ouellet (3), Anthony Michel (2), Sajjin Lali (2), Matthew Newman (2), Garret MacDonald (2), Jayden Story, Allison Moore and Divaan Sahota.

In addition to the above, assists also went to Azaria McDonnell, Atrayu Johnny and Caleb Brackett.
Troy Holmes and Bryce Garcia were the goaltenders all weekend long.