Basketball season got underway over the past weekend with local schools hosting tournaments, giving teams the chance to bite into some competition.
St. Paul Regional High School hosted its annual Tazmania tourney, which saw sixteen teams participate. Schools from across Alberta, including Hanna, Lac La Biche and Pigeon Lake, sent in teams to compete alongside local schools, such as Vilna, Glendon, Ashmont and of course, St. Paul Regional, and action took place in Regional, Racette School and Glen Avon School gyms.
On the girls’ side, St. Paul Regional would come in at the top of the heap. The girls took on Lac La Biche’s J.A. Williams (JAWS) team in the final match, and would finish the game with a winning score of 66 – 41.
“The girls played tough all weekend, improving every game,” said Melissa Mahe, who helps coach the team alongside Sasha Levasseur, Chad Roche and Mona Oszust.
“We’re a young team that’s learning very fast,” added Roche, who noted that most of the team is made up of Grade 10 players, with one Grade 12 and a couple of Grade 11 students rounding out the group. This was the team’s second tournament of the still-young basketball season, after the girls traveled to Lloydminster the weekend before and placed fourth. Based on the team’s efforts at Tazmania, both coaches felt it was going to be a “promising year.”
Glendon’s girls team would take on Pigeon Lake for third place and would seal the win in that match-up.
On the boys’ side, JAWS would beat out St. Paul Regional’s boys team for third place, while Ashmont and Hanna would battle for first. It was a close game, with the two teams staying close to one another, until Hanna drew ahead by 73 – 67 in the final quarter. Ashmont would close the gap and make it 73 – 71 with 44 seconds left in the game, but Hanna managed to kill their opponents’ chances and draw a foul in the final seconds of the game. The team would sink one of its foul shots to make the score 74 – 71 and then killed the clock to win first place.
“The boys played well,” said George Silva, Ashmont coach, adding that this is the second tournament in which the team has played. In the earlier tournament that took place in Vermilion, the Ashmont boys won, boding well for the season. He notes that seven Grade 12s have returned to the team for this year. “We’ve got some depth and I think we should be OK.”
Ashmont School has been categorized as a 1A school this year, and Silva said he was waiting to see how the school came up when provincial rankings are released this week. He’s hoping there are enough ranked teams in the zone for the school to get a wild card into provincials.
“Last time we were a 1A, we lost in the provincial finals,” he said, noting that was in 2004.
St. Paul Regional’s senior boys coach Tim Penner helped to organize Tazmania and says, “I think it ran really smoothly.” He said many of the games were close ones, making for good competition.
“Obviously, Ashmont’s very strong,” he noted for the upcoming season. As league games unfold this year, Penner said Ashmont would prove to be a challenge for St. Paul Regional’s boys, and added, “I hope we’ll give them a run when we play them.”