The 20th annual Kathy Mitchell Memorial Cup at St. Mary’s last weekend was a great success, even if the Sharks didn’t win, coach Peter Molesky says.
The Sharks lost the consolation final 40-27 after a tough defensive game against the Mayerthorpe Tigers.
“I was happy with the level of play at the tournament. We had a lot of competitive teams, and we didn’t have any games that were really blowouts,” Molesky said.
The Sharks lost their first game 68-25 against Hay Lakes, who went on to win the tournament. That put them on the consolation side of the tournament.
Saturday morning, they faced Concordia, and after a hard-fought battle, they edged out their opponents 59-50 to earn their spot in the consolation final.
The consolation final against the Tigers was a very defensively oriented game, as can be seen by the low scoring.
Despite missing the consolation title, which Molesky described as unsatisfying, the team’s performance was admirable.
“I thought we had progress. It was hard not to be happy with what happened,” he said.
He added everyone at the tournament was well behaved, which made it that much more enjoyable.
“I was particularly pleased with the refereeing,” Molesky said. “We had great referees for the tournament and I think that’s why so many of the teams mentioned to me they’d like to come back and participate again.”
The Kathy Mitchell Memorial Cup was named for a former student and staff member at St. Mary who was killed in a house fire.
“It was a tragedy, and we wanted to do something to honour her so we named the tournament after her,” Molesky said.
Both the St. Mary boys and girls teams will host the zone championships on the weekend of March 11, and he said he hopes to make some improvements in the meantime.
“In a lot of our recent games we’ve given up more points through our own mistakes. We’re playing good defence and preventing them from scoring until we get the ball and turn it over,” he said.
If they can make some improvements on their game, Molesky said the Sharks should be quite competitive at zones.
“I think we have a good chance. We’re not guaranteed anything but we saw the opposition at the tournament,” he said.
“Barring any kind of unusual move, we know what we have to do and we’re confident if we do it we could stand a chance.”
The girls tournament will be held March 11-12 in the St. Mary gym, while the boys tournament will be held in the R.F. Staples gym.
