WENATCHEE, Wash. - While two of the Wenatchee Wild Hockey Academy's teams were celebrating a holiday weekend over Thanksgiving, the Academy's weekend teams were beefing up their schedules with the program's annual Junior Exposure Tournament. The Wenatchee 15-Only and 14-and-Under teams each played four games in the tournament, with the 14-and-Under team finishing 1-3 for the weekend with an overtime loss in the semifinal round. After a 3-0 win by the Seattle Jr. Kraken on Friday, the Wild Hockey Academy rebounded for a 5-2 victory over Sno-King on Saturday morning. North Shore Winter Club nabbed wins in Wenatchee's final two 14U games of the weekend, by 5-1 and 3-2 counts, on the way to a tournament championship.

"It's a process, and I've embraced it. I think our team has embraced it," said head coach Jarrod Boman. "The scores definitely don't reflect a lot of the progress of this team, which is disappointing sometimes. I wish the hard work would be rewarded a little more, but at least we're progressing and they're understanding and learning the game a lot more."

With five teams in the tournament's older division, the 15O team played four round-robin games but did not advance to the championship game on Sunday afternoon. The Portland Jr. Winterhawks picked up a 7-3 win on Friday, followed by a 5-3 win for Sno-King on Friday afternoon. The Penticton Jr. Vees and Spokane Jr. Chiefs both prevailed in their matchups against the Wild 15O team, rounding out Wenatchee's pool play schedule with scores of 11-1 and 4-3, respectively. Penticton would go on to win the tournament's 15O championship.

"The 14U don't get a lot of home games because they're a weekend model team and they have to go to a lot of tournaments, so we always try to take pride in our home tournament so the families and parents can converge in Wenatchee and have an opportunity to watch four games," said Wenatchee Wild Hockey Academy director Troy Mick. "The 14s went third out of four teams in the round robin, and lost a heartbreaker in overtime in the semifinal that could've gone either way. The 15O competed hard every game - maybe there was one game they'd like to have back. Penticton was an older team that came in bigger and stronger, so it was an opportunity for us to play teams that we don't play. All in all it was a success, and we've got our big one for the 16s and 18s in February."

The Wild 15O team will step onto the ice for practice this week, but the 14U program begins its turn at the Okanagan Classic in Kelowna on Thursday. The CSSHL member teams will be on the ice again after taking the Thanksgiving weekend off, as Okanagan Hockey Academy's U18 team comes down to Wenatchee for games on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The Wild 16U program will be in Canada for the weekend, squaring off with RINK Hockey Academy in Vernon.