The St. Albert Youth Basketball League jamboree tips off this morning for 412 players on 36 teams.
The total breakdown is 111 players (69 boys and 42 girls) in division one (8- to 9-year-olds), 211 players (146 boys and 65 girls) in division two (10- to 12-year-olds) and 90 players (61 boys and 29 girls) in division three (13- to 15-year-olds).
Each team plays two games at the day-long jamboree.
Tonight’s season-windup celebration at the SkyDome starts at 7 p.m. with the coaches’ game.
SAYBL, formerly known as Knights of Columbus Mini Basketball, will also honour the memory of Alfreda Melik at 8 p.m. Melik, who died on Oct. 18, 2016, and her husband, Bernie, ran the league from their home for 39 years before retiring three years ago.
This is the second season for the rebranded youth basketball league.
SAYBL became an official non-profit association in March of 2016.
The Skate Canada entries at the ISU World Junior Figure Skating Championships include the ice dance duo of Lee Royer of St. Albert and Ashlynne Stairs of Calgary.
The junior worlds ends Sunday in Taipei City, Chinese Taipei.
Royer, 18, and Stairs, 16, train at the Champs International Skating Centre in Burnaby, B.C.
The 2017 Canadian junior ice dance silver medallists finished seventh and fifth, respectively, at their ISU Junior Grand Prix assignments in France and Slovenia and were bronze medallists at the Bavarian Open in the junior category.
The Alberta Female Hockey League provincial tournament started Friday for the midget AAA St. Albert Slash in Okotoks.
The scores against Calgary Fire and Red Deer Chiefs were unavailable at press time.
The last round-robin game before the medal playoffs is against the Rocky Mountain Raiders today at 12:15 p.m.
Sunday the third-place game is 9 a.m. and the final is 1 p.m.
The winner advances to the Pacific Regional Championship, March 31 to April 2, to determine the representative at the Esso Cup nationals, April 23 to 29 at Morden, Man.
In the inaugural AFHL season, the Slash (27-2-1, 119 GF/44 GA) finished first, followed by the second-place Raiders (18-9-3,89 GF/58 GA), third-place Calgary (12-17-1, 47 GF/75 GA) and fourth-place Red Deer (11-15-4, 40 GF/51 GA) in the six-team standings.
Local players on the Slash roster are Isabelle Lajoie of St. Albert, Jayme Doyle of Calahoo, MacKenzie Reynolds of Gibbons and Makenna Schuttler of Sturgeon County.
