Roadrunners scoop national championship

A group of local fifteen-year olds struck gold at the national roller hockey championships in California in mid July, winning the Pee Wee Silver National championship.

The players, from Lynbrook, East Rockaway, Malverne, Rockville Centre and Freeport, as well as their coach from Valley Stream, all flew out to San Jose, CA to participate in the North American Roller Hockey Championships as the Long Island-based Tour Roadrunners 1995 travel roller hockey team. 

The boys all play regularly in the Lynbrook Roller Hockey League program at Greis Park, but for nine months of the year they also practice and play for the Tour Roadrunners travel team in regional tournaments and national qualifiers in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — all leading up to the national championships every July.

  The 1995 team won all three group games in their age division with a combined score of 21-1, and then continued unbeaten through the playoff rounds before winning the gold medal game 7-2 over the local favorites, the NorCal Extreme.

Two of the fifteen-year-old players, Jonathan Kaszuba from Lynbrook and Mark Brady from Rockville Centre, also played for the 18-year-old Tour Roadrunners 1992 team at the tournament which swept through the competition undefeated to win the gold medal in that age group too.

Tour Roadrunner teams for birth years 1996 and 2000 also came home from San Jose with gold medals and national championship trophies as Long Island teams dominated the opening days of the tournament.

  After a short break, all the Roadrunners teams will begin practicing again at the end of the summer to prepare to defend their title at the 2011 national championships which will be held in Florida next July.