Jasper Place – The St. Albert Skyhawks are playing from a position of strength at the 37th annual REB Invitational.
With three players unavailable for the tournament, the 2018 metro Edmonton division one champions and 4A provincial bronze medallists are committed to the challenge with a sense of purpose.
“We have nothing to lose coming in,” said Kamryn DeKlerk, a Grade 11 point guard, after the Skyhawks shut down the Lethbridge Collegiate Clippers 72-46 Thursday with 10 players contributing.
“Everybody has got to step up. It can’t just be a few of us. Everybody has got to play 10 times harder than they did before,” DeKlerk added. “We pride ourselves on working hard. We can’t rely on talent to win us games because if we get outworked, they’re going to win. We’ve got to work hard for everything since we’re not going to be given anything so with that gritty attitude I think we can really step up.”
Friday’s semifinal against the Paul Kane Blues, the defending REB champions, was shaping up to be a stiff test without Grade 11 forward Teå DeMong, a 2018 Metro Athletics all-star and second-team All Canadian at U17 nationals, and a pair of Grade 10s from the U15 provincial team, Annacy Palmer and Morgan Harris. The trio are among 57 players to receive invites to the women’s national age-group assessment camps in Toronto.
The score was unavailable at press time.
“We’re really going to get a sense who we are as a team out of that game,” DeKlerk said. “We know they’re a good team. It’s exciting knowing that we’re going to have to compete all 40 minutes. When someone subs in, they’ve got to take the spot of the person before them. There can’t be any dips in energy.”
Today the Skyhawks play the host Jasper Place Rebels or Western Canada Redhawks of Calgary at 2 p.m. in the third-place game or 6 p.m. in the final.
The seventh win in 10 games for Skyhawks this season was the workmanlike outing against the Clippers. Period scores were 27-15 after the first, 47-22 at halftime and 57-34 with 10 minutes remaining.
“We all worked really hard. We knew they were going to be a tough team so we came out really strong,” DeKlerk said. “We got everybody in which is nice because we had a short bench today and everybody was filling the spot of the person that came in before them.”
Mimi Sigue led all scorers with 21 points before foul trouble reduced her minutes in the second half. The powerful Grade 11 post set the tone for victory in the first half with 13 points.
DeKlerk tossed in 17 points during an indefatigable performance at both ends of the court with a mixture of slick baskets off layups and jumpers as well as pulling off some blocked shots and stuffs as an energetic five-foot-nine defender.
“I worked hard for 40 minutes and I knew I wasn’t going to get a lot of subs today so that was my mentality coming in,” DeKlerk said. “I’m going to make mistakes and everybody else is, too, so it was all about keeping a level head about it and then next play mentality.”
The day before the tournament opener, the Skyhawks polished off the host Archbishop MacDonald Marauders 72-27 in the team’s metro league lid-lifter.
The Skyhawks were coming off a successful third-place showing at the Victoria Christmas Tournament last weekend.
Scores were 76-57 against Britannia of East Vancouver and 88-65 against Walnut Grove of Langley before the 90-87 semifinal loss to Oak Park of Winnipeg.
The third-place game was the convincing 92-64 win over Brookswood of Langley as the Skyhawks utilized their depth and inside/outside scoring. It also helped the Brookswood coach was ejected in the third quarter.
DeMong, 16, averaged a team-high 21 points over the four games and Palmer was the second-leading scorer averaging 16 points per game.
Sigue was her usual intimidating presence and along with Dakota Wedman, a top-notch newcomer, dominated the glass.
Izzy Valerio and Maty Drefs hit key three-pointers as Grade 10s, the team’s four Grade 12s – Bella Cuciz, Kyleigh Kornak, Aine Murphy and Kaya Vandermeer – provided valuable minutes and needed scoring when necessary and rookie Aislinn Libich also chipped in offensively.
“We really competed. Going in there we knew we were going to get good games so that’s why we went,” said DeKlerk, a steady double-digit scorer in the tournament and team leader in assists. “It was also good for us to experience playing back to back because some days we’re going to have to play two games in a row and just knowing how to deal with it will help especially for our rookies playing against teams that knew what they were doing all the time.”
The best of the bunch for the Skyhawks in terms of intensity and execution was against Walnut Grove, No. 2 in the pre-season rankings in B.C.
“That was really encouraging,” DeKlerk said. “We came in knowing that they were going to be tough and we just locked up on their best players.”
The semifinal against Oak Park, ranked No. 1 in Manitoba, was the one that got away from the Skyhawks. DeMong and Sigue were plagued by fouls that hurt the Skyhawks and Harris suffered a bloody nose which forced the quality guard to miss the third quarter.
“That was a tough team. They've got two players that played on their Manitoba provincial team,” DeKlerk said. “It could've gone either way. It just came down to whoever worked harder in the final minutes and they just outworked us.”
Over the summer, DeKlerk joined DeMong and Sigue, along with Kaitlyn Kluttig and Ella Stanley of the Blues, on the U17 provincial team that finished fourth at nationals in Fredericton, N.B.
“I didn’t really have a leadership role off the court but on the court I was leading by example and just doing the things I do well. I was given a lot of freedom by my coach just to play my game and that really helped me as a player,” said DeKlerk, a U15 Team Alberta player for two years who lives in Rollyview and joined the Skyhawks in Grade 10 after playing junior high basketball in Leduc.
Monday in league action the Skyhawks visit the Spruce Grove Panthers (0-1) at 5 p.m.
