Sometimes if you want to accomplish your goals, eventually you will need a little help from your friends.
That is the feeling from Cariboo Cougars Head Coach Tyler Brough after receiving the BC Major Midget League Coach of the Year Award after guiding the Cats to their second provincial title in five years as well as an appearance at the Pacific Regionals where they fell short against the Calgary Buffaloes.
In an interview with MY PG Now, Brough was quick to give credit to his assistant coaches who were along for the journey every step of the way.
“I’ve got good people around me in my bench assistants Hayden and RJay Berra and of course Trevor Sprague in the GM role supporting us as well as our goalie coach Lyman Miller, the support staff we have is great, it’s called coach of the year but I call it staff of the year.”
Brough and his staff led Cariboo to a second place finish in the regular season with a record 27-8-5 one point back of the defending champion Fraser Valley Thunderbirds who they dispatched in a two-game sweep to re-claim the Major Midget Crown in March.
And the Cougars did it this year with a much different cast of characters who didn’t have the game-breaking skill level than in previous seasons.
“We had a much different group this year, maybe not as high-end skill as last year but we definitely had a big buy in this year from our group and the effort level from camp is that we kind of saw we were going to be a hard-working team that hopefully scored by committee and everyone found their role and that’s exactly what happened.”
“At the end of the day, it’s got to come from your players, they deserved the championship, I thought we deserved a little bit better in Calgary getting to that game three but we’ll never know what happened. Leaving Calgary it is the same mentality I want for our returning guys next year, I want all them to remember the feeling of disappointment and do whatever we can to put ourselves in that game next year.”
Brough explains there is not a lot of downtime for him as Cariboo gets ready to identify players for next season starting with their identification camp later this spring.