It was probably the best way to kick off the year.
The Edwin Parr Composite senior girls basketball team ended up in the final of their season opening tournament hosted by Lillian Osborne School in Edmonton.
“We played pretty good and ended up losing in the final,” said head coach Wade Hicks.
While the score in the final certainly wasn’t flattering — they fell by 30 points to the rather strong Ross Sheppard High School — it also doesn’t tell the entire story.
“That was the closest game Ross Shep had all weekend and we had a good game,” stated Hicks.
“Needless to say, the girls found out just how fast senior high basketball can be and certainly showed us what we need to work on.
“And right now, we only have about half of our game plan installed from what we will have come February. We have very few of our systems in.”
For instance, the team only has a very basic man-to-man offence and hasn’t worked at all on implementing a zone offence or defence.
“We only just started working on our press break and haven’t yet gotten to putting in our own pressure defence,” he said.
The road to the final began Friday with a 42-25 victory over Millwoods Christian, a game that Hicks knew was going to be an ugly one.
“I knew with it being our first time out that things weren’t going to be pretty. We had some passes that didn’t go where they should and other things that were kind of ugly, though we did manage to get the win,” he added.
That pushed the Predators into the semifinal against Oscar Romero High School, where the girls held onto win 47-39.
“We had a 17-point lead at one time and let them crawl back into the game,” Hicks stated.
“Romero hadn’t made a jump shot all day until all of a sudden, they start jacking up three’s and they start falling. That certainly made things interesting.”
The girls were in Barrhead last night for their first league game of the season (result unavailable at press time) and will head to Spruce Grove this coming weekend for another tournament.
