St. Mary School’s senior boys and girls basketball teams are in good standing in the North Central Alberta School Athletic Association 1A zone rankings after collecting silver medals at the third annual Romes Tournament at the Rotary Spirit Centre Jan. 12-13.
“A lot of my players and friends call me Romes, so I went with that for the name,” said tournament organizer and boys head coach Darcy Romanuik. “It makes for a good conversation piece. It’s a January mid-ranking tournament that lets us see where the strengths of the zone are. This was probably the second biggest tournament of the year for us, next to zone finals.”
Nine boys and six girls teams made the trek from as far away as Breton to compete. When the dust settled, Breton High School took the gold for the boys and Thorsby won the girls.
The boys opened with an 82-16 victory over Thorsby and followed that with a 76-67 win over Holy Trinity before losing to Breton in the final. The girls opened with a 53-31 win over Boyle before crushing Breton 60-32 the next day before losing to Thorsby.
“It came down to the wire. We should have won the final game, we just couldn’t make our shots down the stretch,” said girls head coach Glenn Schwarz.
“They fought hard right to the end of that game. I could not say enough about the girls effort and determination.”
Both coaches saw similar strengths and issues over the weekend — namely offence. Romanuik noted that his squad needed to stick to their systems, suggesting that a slight breakdown in discipline in the final minutes of the tournament was the difference for the Sharks.
“The effort was there, the skill was there. We lead for over half of the game,” he said.
“We went away from our offense and they did not. We started shooting from the outside and weren’t hitting anything.
“The turning point was about four and a half minutes left. You live dangerously in basketball when you shoot from the three-point line.”
This was the first time both St. Mary teams had been medal contenders in two years. With the second-place finish, the Sharks are now seeded in the Top 3 in the zone.
The Sharks are back to practicing for the remainder of the month and Schwarz said that he was looking to arrange a few exhibition games. Their next tournament is a trip to the “Quad Schools” tournament in Camrose on Feb. 2-3.
After that, St. Mary will host three big tournaments in a month. The boys host an event at the Spirit Centre Feb. 9-10 and the girls host a tournament Feb. 23-24. The zone finals are scheduled March 9-10.
