Jasper Place – The St. Albert Skyhawks are playing for pride instead of a medal today in 4A provincial basketball.
The Skyhawks, seeded second in the 16-team women’s tournament, failed to advance into the medal round after Thursday’s 63-57 loss to the 10th-seeded Medicine Hat Kwahommies.
It was only the fifth setback in 36 games for last year’s 4A bronze medallists.
“It’s very disappointing because the girls truly felt this was the year where they wanted to achieve better than last year having been there in 4A for the first time,” said a glum-looking Paige Gaudreau, the team’s head coach, after a lengthy post-game soul-searching session with the players.
The last time the Skyhawks didn’t medal at provincials was 2009 in 3A before winning a record-setting four consecutive 3A banners.
“It’s a hard pill to swallow,” said a teary-eyed Marinya Marcichiw, co-captain and one of five Skyhawks who celebrated a 3A championship in 2013. “We worked really hard all year and this isn’t the outcome we had originally set our goal to be.”
The Kwahommies pulled off the tournament upset against a team they lost to by 26 points at the Skyhawks Invitational in January.
“We came in as major underdogs,” said Jenna Spruyt, a Grade 12 standout for the Kwahommies. “It means so much to us because we played them before and we didn’t do so hot. It’s just an amazing feeling.”
There was no time for a pity party for the Skyhawks with two games to go. Friday they played the sixth-seeded Cardston Cougars but the score was unavailable at press time.
“We don’t have a lot of time to hang our heads because we’ve got to refocus and get ready for (Friday) because whoever we’re going to play is an outstanding basketball team as well and they will be in the same boat as us,” Gaudreau said.
Win or lose, the Skyhawks’ last game of the season tips off at 2 p.m. against the eighth-seeded Bishop Grandin Ghosts of Calgary or the 12th-seeded Raymond Comets, last year’s 4A champions, at Jasper Place High School to determine the team’s final positioning in the draw.
“There is still time to show who we are,” said Marcichiw, 18.
The Skyhawks had several issues to sort out after the Kwahommies made them look very ordinary.
“Unfortunately, Medicine Hat was better than us today.” Gaudreau said. “They executed better than we did. Our execution was there at times but we weren’t able to hit shots when we needed to.”
The Kwahommies excelled in all aspects of the game.
“It came down to possessions and being smart with the ball, just the little things like moving our feet, not fouling and taking it to the hoop,” Spruyt said. “We know they’re a transition team and they like to run and push and drive and we needed to stop that and I think we did awesome at that today.”
The metro Edmonton division one finalists the last two years gave up more points in the first half (29) in the quarter-finals than they did in the 99-16 laugher against the 15th-seeded Dr. E.P. Scarlett Lancers of Calgary in the round of 16 Thursday morning at the SkyDome.
Brielle Wise’s field goal before the buzzer left the Kwahommies trailing by seven at the end of the first quarter but they erased the deficit for brief leads towards the end of the first half as the Skyhawks pulled even twice on baskets by Marcichiw and Jamie Cole.
“We had a very good start and we didn’t maintain that and push back when we needed to. I think we were happy to be tied (at 29) at the half with kind of how the game was going,” Gaudreau said.
“We got casual for a couple of minutes and once we got casual we let them dictate our tempo,” added Marcichiw, a Grade 12 forward who finished the loss with seven points after sinking 12 against the Lancers. “We were digging our heels in trying to get back instead of trying to dictate the tempo.”
The Kwahommies jumped ahead to stay on Jordyn Kearley’s three-pointer to make it 34-33 with 5:53 left in the third quarter to kick start a nine-point run before Marcichiw sank the first of two free throws with 2:52 to go before quarter time.
“We didn’t give up on each other and we didn’t get down on ourselves and that got us the lead, which ultimately led to us calming down,” Spruyt said. “As soon as we got a lead we stuck with our stuff that was working, our plays and our defence.”
Down 48-39 after three quarters the Skyhawks looked like a team that was scared to lose.
“Once they took the lead the girls aren’t behind often so that may have put a little bit of a seed of doubt in some of them,” Gaudreau said.
The Kwahommies also noticed the Skyhawks had lost their mojo while trying to close the gap on the front-runners.
“We could definitely see their posture and everything else had dropped and that was really exciting to us because we knew we were frustrating them. We were doing our jobs that we needed to do to get things done,” said Spruyt, 18.
The six-foot-three post was a tower of power in the paint as the tallest player on the court. Her 15 points included a high number of free throws.
Isabel Rattai was the top scorer with 16 points and her three-pointer with 2:30 remaining in the third quarter put the Kwahommies up by 10. She also converted a missed free throw by Spruyt into a basket for the team’s fifth-straight point to pad the lead to 60-50 with 4:45 to play.
Kearley collected 13 points and Mariene Mangosong added 12 for the girls in green.
“I’m so proud of everybody on my team,” said Spruyt, a teammate of Marcichiw and Wise with the Alberta bronze medallists at the 2014 Canada Basketball U17 nationals. “All the south teams are thought of as not as exciting as the Edmonton and Calgary teams lots of times but we had just come off a great weekend. We won the (south) zones and made some big upsets. We beat Cardston and Raymond and then we made an upset this morning, we beat the number seven team (Jasper Place Rebels 40-31) and then we made another upset now. We’re going good, we're going strong and we’re going to finish strong.”
Wise led the team in points with 14 and Jessa Ivicak tossed in 10 as the Skyhawks suffered from erratic outside shooting. The Kwahommies also formed a human shield around the basket that the Skyhawks were unable to penetrate.
Visit www.asaa.ca to link up to the provincial website for results.
