A short bench ultimately doomed the St. Mary Sharks girls basketball team to an eighth-place finish at the 2013 Cathy Mitchell Cup this past weekend.
Playing in their home tournament Feb. 22-23, the girls were unable to win a single game, but put up a stiff fight in their last game, only to see their fourth-quarter lead slip away.
“We just didn’t have enough bodies,” said coach Peter Molesky. “We were hurting physically, but we didn’t lack heart and desire. The girls were willing to go out there.”
In the Sharks’ final game against the Edwin Parr Predators from Athabasca, they dressed only five players.
Despite managing to maintain a slim lead through the first three quarters, fatigue set in in the fourth quarter, allowed the Predators to take the lead and gradually pull away en route to a 68-52 win, relegating the Sharks to last place.
In the first two games of the tournament, the Sharks fell 69-34 to the St. Jerome Spartans and lost 61-15 to the Fort Saskatchewan Stingers.
“We thought we could play with the last two teams,” Molesky said after the final buzzer sounded. “But we were lacking the bodies and were getting tired. The other teams had the bodies.”
Throughout the season, Molesky said he had a stable crop of six girls to work with, and in some tournaments and games only had five or as few as four actually on the court.
Having so few players at his disposal meant he wasn’t able to rest his players to sustain an attack for a full, 40-minute game.
The Sharks have thus far shown they can play with anyone, he said, but can’t pull out a lot of wins because they’re simply worn out in the late stages.
“It’s frustrating because we know we can play good when we’re fresh, but we don’t have much to offer when we start tiring,” he said.
Looking to next season, Molesky said he feels the team is in good shape and should be competitive because there are no Grade 12 players on this year’s squad.
With every player being eligible to return, he said the lessons they’ve learned this year will serve them well when they’re a year older and more experienced.
He added he’s hoping more girls join the team, so he can pull players during games to rest them so the Sharks can put up an equal fight in the dying minutes of close games.
The Cathy Mitchell Cup was the Sharks’ last tournament of the regular season, Molesky said.
He’s trying to line up an exhibition game or two, but failing that the girls next play at the zone tournament on March 8-9 in Drayton Valley.
