For the coach of one high school girls basketball team, it wasn’t just another tournament.
Not just a shot at putting more wins on the board or getting her team ready for a grueling season.
This was a trip back home for Marci Kiselyk – an opportunity to see family, old friends and to give her young girls team some sense of just what it was like for her growing up and what made her the player, and now coach, that she is today.
Kiselyk is a 2006 alum of Edwin Parr Composite and in her fourth season at the helm of the senior girls basketball team at Aden Bowman Collegiate in Saskatoon, where she teaches science after graduating with an education degree from the University of Saskatchewan.
“I love it,” she stated in between the semifinal and the tournament final Dec. 13, which her club won very handily over Cold Lake.
While at the U of S, she played five seasons for Huskies coach Lisa Thomaidis, who is also now the head coach of the national senior women’s team basketball, and earned a number of team and individual honours.
Kiselyk was a Canadian Interuniversity Sport All-Academic selection in 2009-10, named to the U of S All-First Team Academic in 2010 and 2011 as well as 2010 bronze at CIS Nationals, led the Huskies to a Canada West title with 20 points and 10 rebounds before falling that year in the national championship game. She is also a champion football player, having twice won the Western Women’s Canadian Football title with the Saskatoon Valkyries to go along with a world women’s title in 2013.
It’s never been easy for her, but she counts herself fortunate to have had the experiences and mentors she did along the way.
“I really enjoyed it in high school, I was simply more suited to the way things were at school. It was very cool to be back here and I was very fortunate to have someone as a coach that was as dedicated as (still present EPC senior girls head coach Wade) Hicks,” she said.
“I was a better than average player and always very competitive, but had some good support and was willing to put in the time and effort at university to be better on the court and in class.
“As I look back, there isn’t much I would change in my time with the Huskies. I was able to learn so much from Lisa. She was very effective is getting us to accept nothing less than her high standard and that help develop us as athletes and me as a coach.
And you can see all of those attributes in her team, something Kiselyk credits to Hicks and Thomaidis.
“The biggest thing is getting the players to buy into your program, something my coaches did. Because if the players believe and trust you, they will battle and play hard for the team,” she said.
“It was great to come back and it was a wonderful experience for our girls too.
It was also an experience that coach Kiselyk and her team got to share – their first EPC Invitational Championship title.
Hard to believe all of the success Kiselyk has had in the past, that only in her return home would she earn her first win in this event.
