Two young Warriors in Ben Richards and Callum Read will represent Great Britain in the Under 18 World Championships Division 2 Group A this week in Dumfries, Scotland. Another Whitley youngster netminder Jordan Boyle who acted as back up goaltender for the Warriors during the 2012/13 season unfortunately just missed out on being selected for the tournament.
Ben Richards and Callum Read both first broke into the Warriors squad during the 2012/13 season however the 2 up and coming youngsters have really established themselves as part of Whitley senior team’s squad this season. Ben is a skilful winger who has been able to pick up a highly impressive 15 points in his 21 Moralee Conference outings this season while Callum is a solid dependable d man who has iced for Whitley on 24 occasions this term picking up 10 minutes in penalties along the way.
The Championships is a round robin tournament where every team plays everyone else in the group, the six teams grouped together in Dumfries are GB, Croatia, Korea, Lithuania, Holland and Romania. The opening games of the Championships get underway on Monday with GB taking on Holland in the evening game which faces off at 8pm. GB play in the evening games throughout the tournament taking on Korea on Tuesday, Romania on Thursday, Croatia on Saturday and rounding off the tournament with a game against Lithuania on Sunday 30th March.
Another Whitley connection with the under 18 World Championships is that Warriors head coach Simon Leach is assistant coach for GB. Simon will assist Solway Sharks supremo Martin Grubb who is head coach for GB at under 18 level throughout the Championships alongside fellow assistant Jamie Elson.
It would be superb to see a great number of Warriors fans up in the Scottish borders at Dumfries to cheer Ben, Callum and all the other GB youngsters on as Britain look to put up accomplished showings against the other countries in their division.