Young goalie wins top award

Despite a stellar performance from 16-year-old goalkeeper Heath Creamasco, the Lower Great Southern Hockey Association men's side finished fifth in division 1 of the CBH Group Men's Country Championships in Perth over the long weekend.

Creamasco was named the joint winner of the division 1 fairest and best award, with Eastern Goldfields' Nick Lavery, in his debut tournament for the LGSHA senior team.

The little-known goalie plays men's B-grade for Vikings and boys under-18s for Albany Senior High School and has filled in twice for the Tigers in the men's A-grade competition.

The teenager said he did not initially believe his schoolmates when they told him the news.

"One day their goalie couldn't make training so they asked me to come down and train," he said.

"They must have been impressed with how I went, so they kept asking me to come back.

"When someone at school said I had won (fairest and best) I said don't kid me around, but I went home and checked on the internet and it was true."

Creamasco said it was great to play alongside men at the tournament.

"It was good to experience a higher level of hockey," he said.

"Most of our games I got a bit hammered in goals, but I only play as good as my team."

The LGSHA began their campaign with a narrow 2-1 defeat to Upper Great Southern before going down to Geraldton 5-3 later that day.

On Sunday they rounded out the pool matches with a 3-1 win over Greater Wheatbelt to finish third in pool B.

In their classification match, LGSHA met UGS 2 and they ran out rampant 6-0 winners on Sunday night, progressing to a play-off for fifth on Monday.

Peel, however, chose to forfeit the match on the final day, handing LGSHA a 5-0 win and fifth place in the championships.

LGSHA player-coach Tim Pyle said his side were only lacking a bit of class against the better teams.

"It shows where we are at," he said.

"We couldn't get over the good teams, but we certainly weren't the worst team there.

"We just lacked a little bit of quality."

Pyle praised Creamasco for his stellar tournament in goals and said Kieran Howie, David Pyle, Xander Burcham and Chris Metcalfe were also solid performers.

"For Heath to win that award is massive," Pyle said.

"He deserves it.

"He did brilliantly and he had a fair share of work too."