Mark Baldwin Memorial recreational hockey tournament gets underway today

Cox's Cove - "Mark would be proud if he were here today, we know he would join right into the game he loved to play."

That is a verse from a song dedicated to Mark Baldwin on the Mark Baldwin Memorial hockey tournament website.

The Cox's Cove native, an avid hockey fan, was in the prime of his life at 19 years old when he died in a single-vehicle accident in Fort McMurray back in 2002.

Tommy Buffett, a cousin and good friend of Mark, keeps the memory of this carefree young man alive with an annual recreational hockey tournament at the Marshall Moores Arena in Cox's Cove. This year, the fifth annual tournament features five teams from the Bay of Islands area with family and friends also making their annual trek home to play hockey in memory of Mark. The tournament gets underway Friday and wraps up Sunday.

Mark Baldwin died on May 14, which just happened to be Tommy Buffett's birthday. After the shock had worn off and time healed some wounds, Buffett thought Mark's passion for hockey should be kept alive.

"I just decided what better way to keep his legacy and his memory alive than to have a memorial hockey tournament?" Buffett said, noting a Los Angeles Kings jersey hangs from the rafters at the Marshall Moores Arena in memory of Mark because he was a big Kings fan.

Buffett described his friend as a very likeable person who had to work hard for everything he got in life.

"He was a happy-go-lucky young man who never took anything too serious. He took everything in stride," Buffett told The Western Star Thursday morning.

While the tournament has always been a gathering of family and friends of Mark, this year marks a special occasion because Mark's mother Kay Baldwin will make the trek from Fort McMurray to take in the action for the first time. She will be joined by Mark's grandmother Nina Baldwin, a fixture at all of the previous tournaments.

"She always supported it, she is very touched by it, but I guess it was hard for her to face it, to lose a child at an early age," he said of Mark's mom not being able to attend until now. "Every year she calls me up and thanks me and cries ... but she just couldn't face it."

On the ice this weekend, Howard White's Boys - a Cox's Cove-based entry - will be out to defend a title they have captured the past two years. Hoping to upset the two-time defending champions will be the Bay of Islands Beers, Island Roofing/Trophy Shop Islanders, the Sabres and the Bud Light Icemen.

One of the great things about the tournament is proceeds go to a worthwhile cause. A $500 scholarship has been set up at Templeton Academy - Mark's high school - and is awarded by school administrators to the student deemed to be the most spirited and dedicated student at the school.

A new award introduced this year is the Mark Baldwin Memorial Most Sportsmanlike Player award, donated in memory of Calvin Payne. Payne, who died recently, was a big supporter of the tournament and thought a lot of Mark. All that is required now is the co-operation of Mother Nature, but Buffett said the ice has never been better at the natural-ice facility. This year, he said, they packed the whole stadium with snow and ran over it with all-terrain vehicles to make it nice and hard.

"We started whacking the water to it and geez we got about eight inches of ice out there this year," he said.

For a complete tournament schedule see the Scoreboard on Page 14.