After spending the past few months enjoying the summer heat, the Alpena High School hockey team took the ice on Friday for their annual summer tournament.

Two Alpena teams were split up and competed on Friday against visiting Cheboygan and Ann Arbor Pioneer. The Alpena green team held on to defeat Cheboygan in the first game of the night by a score of 3-2.

“The first game we started off a little slow, but Cheboygan is a good team, they’re fast and physical. About halfway through the game we picked it up and were able to get a win,” Alpena coach Ben Henry said

The Alpena white team dominated Ann Arbor Pioneer for the entire 45 minutes and came away with a 5-2 victory.

Alpena wasted no time, scoring two minutes into the game as Colby Plowman found the back of the net on a slick wrap around goal.

Less than three minutes later, Plowman lit the lamp again, this time as the Wildcats were shorthanded.

Alpena added a third goal with under two and a half minutes left in the opening period when Cole Baskerville scored.

The Wildcats dominated the entire period and outshot Ann Arbor 15-2 in the first period and they did not let up in the final two periods.

The team took a four goal lead late in the second period on a goal by Keegan Matthews. Alpena continued its physical play all game long and kept the pressure on Ann Arbor the entire night.

The Wildcats did however have their shutout spoiled as Ann Arbor took advantage of two powerplay goals, but were never close to making any kind of comeback.

Damen McCall scored the fifth and final goal for Alpena on the night as the Wildcats finished the game outshooting Ann Arbor 43-13.

“Both teams worked hard and never gave up. I never really saw a lack of work ethic out of either team today which I was happy to see and we didn’t play dirty. We just played two really good games of hockey and hopefully we can keep that up throughout the weekend,” Henry said.

The tournament will continue today as each team will play each other once in a round robin style format, with the top two teams playing in the championship game.

“Having two teams from Alpena along with two other solid teams is nice, it will be interesting to see what happens the rest of the weekend and obviously the goal is to get both Alpena teams into the championship game and see what happens from there,” Henry said.