John MacNeil
Daily Herald
Accustomed to scoring goals on the ice, Prince Albert Mintos’ sniper Max Cooper took his game to another level this summer and scored his first hole-in-one.
At the end of the school year, Cooper and his buddies were golfing at Greenhills Golf Resort when he aced the par-3 third hole, over the water and using his nine iron.
“It landed just ahead of the hole and it spun back into the hole,” Cooper, 17, said last weekend as the Mintos staged their U18 AAA hockey training camp.
“That was a sick experience. Oh, it was amazing. I still don’t believe that it’s real.”
Cooper had come close to sinking a hole-in-one a couple of times, but the June outing with school friends proved to be his history-making shot. It came on his home course in Greenwater Lake Provincial Park, about 20 minutes from his Porcupine Plain, Sask., home.
“I golf there a lot,” he said. “It was at the end of the (school) year, so we just go to the lake to have fun. Me and my four buddies all went, so it was a big group of us, and it was pretty sick how they all saw it, too. We ate after that and celebrated.”
Along with his rigorous work on his family’s grain farm, Cooper had a part-time summer job at Greenwater Lake Marina.
While at the lake on one occasion this summer, he ran into a longtime friend in Tarin Smith, an Anaheim Ducks’ defence prospect from Porcupine Plain, spending most of the summer in Saskatoon.
Last season, Smith captained the Everett Silvertips to the WHL championship. In the final, they ousted the Prince Albert Raiders, though Smith was unable to play because of injury.
“I used to work out with him,” Cooper said of Smith, 20. “He came to my shed. Just having him there for skates, he’d give me and even younger kids tips and stuff, because he played in the WHL. Now, he got drafted to Anaheim, so he might see some NHL ice.”
For this coming season, Smith is committed to playing NCAA Division 1 hockey with the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers.
