Golden Gate Cup a Success!

This year’s Golden Gate Cup was played at the beautiful Silver Creek Sportsplex in San Jose, California, and included 10 teams, a development camp for the MU19 as well as a referee clinic.

The event took place November 9 – 10, at the same venue where the US Floorball Nationals in 2017.

This year the USA MU19 national floorball team were able to host their development camp in conjunction with the tournament, in doing so they were also able to enter a team in the competitive elite division. Coach Joel Olofsson and assistant coach Lars Halvardsson coached and mentored the team throughout the event.

The USA MU19 team finished on a high note wining their last game of the round robin round against Sacarmento FcB 3 – 2.  Up next for the team is a trip to Sweden for the Storvretacupen as they continue to prepare for the MU19 World Floorball Championships in 2019.

USA Floorball hosted the second referee clinic for the year, and we were very lucky to have it run by SSL referee Thomas Andersson as well as Arash Sohrevardi who both came all the way from Sweden at the clinic. Thomas was also able to referee the tournament and mentor the US based referee group, helping us raise the level of refereeing here in the US.

From the left is Vince Faso, Sean Edin, Arash Sohrevardi and Thomas Andersson.

The US based and newly IFF nominated referee team of Vince Faso and Sean Edin were included in the Golden Gate Cup referee team. The tournament was conducted in a very competitive, but also sportsmanship manner by all teams in attendance.

We were fortunate to include some new teams in the Golden Gate Cup this year and the best performing of them was Utah Floorball. Their big hearts, hard work and team spirit earned them the award as the “Most Inspirational” team.

Day one of Golden Gate Cup 2018 showed Menlo Park continuing what they started at the US Nationals earlier this year, going undefeated throughout the day and securing them a spot in the semifinal by getting the top spot in their division.

In group B SF Floorball played with confidence and also went undefeated to secure the number one spot in their division. The only team to challenge SF Floorball was the 2017 US National Champions SoCAL, from the greater LA area. SoCal And SF Floorball had an intense battle in their group play and tied with a final result of 2 – 2.

Utah received the award for most inspirational team!

On day two Menlo Park cruised comfortably through their semifinal and secured a spot in the final game by winning against Utah with the final score of 10 – 0.

The other semifinal was a hard-fought battle between Colorado and SF Floorball, where Colorado proved that they were the better team and won 5 – 3 after a very tough game.

SF Floorball took third place after winning the bronze game 6 – 2 against Utah Floorball, who subsequently took 4^th place in their first ever Elite Floorball tournament. The Utah team spirit was not broken and they showed that they are a team to watch out for in the future.

Menlo Park secured their fourth Golden Gate Cup championship in row, by winning 6 – 2 against a tough Colorado team, the only team to score against Menlo Park at this tournament. In the end, Menlo Park allowed only 4 goals and they were all scored by Colorado in their two games played against each other. Menlo Park once again showed why they are the best floorball team in the US.

Colorado took home the silver at the Golden Gate Cup!

Besides the already mentioned ‘Most Inspirational Award’, the following individuals received awards:

Most points:

Most Goals:

Most assist:

MVP:

Harri Ruusinen, #5 Menlo Park

Best Goalie:
Chandler Holguin, #31 Colorado

For full details and all statistics from Golden gate Cup 2018 go to:

www.GoldenGateCup.com

Next year will see the 10^th edition of the Golden Gate Cup, which now is the longest consecutive running tournament in the USA. To celebrate, the tournament will be back in San Francisco where it all started 10 years ago. We hope you all will join us in marking this occasion and celebrating this achievement!

Stay tuned for more details and other updates at www.GoldenGateCup.com

/ Calle Karlsson