The Pembina Valley Bantam "AAA" Hawks, who captured the rural provincial championship last weekend with a 3-2 win over the Eastman Selects will now take on the City provincial champion Winnipeg Monarchs.

"We won the rural provincials in Stonewall. It was a battle with five games in three days. The boys really came together. We upset the number one seed Yellowhead (Chiefs). That's excellent and really gave the boys some hope," said Hawks coach Reid Sloan. "Going into the finals playing Eastman, we knew that we could be successful. We had a couple of tight games with them at the end of the year and tied them in our first game at the provincials. We knew it would be close and managed to get a break with a couple minutes left in the game and had a post with about six seconds left and that was able to hold them off and win the championship."

The Hawks started off the championship with a 4-4 tie against the Eastman Selects Friday morning.

Pembina Valley played a pair of games on Saturday and shutout the Interlake Lightning 10-0 and got passed the Southwest Cougars 2-1.

Then in the semi-finals, the Hawks edged the number one ranked Yellowhead Chiefs 3-2. In the championship game, the Hawks edged the Selects 3-2 to be crowned "AAA" Bantam Rural Champions.

Since the Hawks won the rural title, they will now square off with the City provincial champion Winnipeg Monarchs who will be coming to Morden this weekend for a best-of-three series.

"A quick start is important because if you can get game number one it just puts them on their heels a little bit," said Sloan. "They (the Monarchs) hadn't lost a game in the two seven game series. They went 8-0. If we could pull out a win in game one on Friday that would be huge for the boys."

Game one goes Friday at 6:15 p.m., game two is Saturday at 4:00 p.m. and game three if necessary will be played Sunday afternoon at 2:00 p.m.

"We have to get off to a good start in the first period. We have to play a big game. We may not be a big team, but we have to take away their speed. They are a solid team and have a lot of depth there and are well coached," added Sloan. "It's just going to be who is going to get some bounces. Hopefully, we get a few more bounces than they do."

If Pembina Valley wins this best-of-three series against the Monarchs they will represent Manitoba at Westerns.

Photo courtesy of Jason Moroz