The St. Mary Sharks home tournament is being hailed as a success, even though neither host team medaled.
The school hosted the Joe Nestorovich Memorial tournament at the Westlock Rotary Spirit Centre Oct. 24-25, with seven boys teams and eight girls teams vying for the title.
Boys coach Vance Nakonechny said his team came away with a third-place finish after losing to Thorhild Central School in the semifinals.
“We were third after the round robin, and lost out to the eventual champions,” he said.
He noted it wasn’t the strongest performance he’s seen from his team this year, but attributed that to a three-week break since the last tournament.
“I thought we could have done a little better; we were pretty inconsistent,” he said. “We haven’t had a tournament since before Thanksgiving, and sometimes you can get a little rusty.”
Nonetheless he has high hopes going into a tournament in Thorhild next weekend, where the Sharks will take a run at the championship in Thorhild’s host tournament.
“We have to be consistent in doing the proper things all the time, and not getting lazy on the court,” he said. “It will come.”
On the girls’ side, coach Corinna Sturkenboom said she was happy with a fifth-place finish out of the eight teams in the tournament — this is a relatively inexperienced team with no Grade 12s on it.
“They’ve only played one tournament so far, and I really saw them grow, knowing where they have to be and what they have to do,” she said.
“I think it was a really good tournament, even if we didn’t make it to the playoffs.”
She added one of the high points of the tournament was getting to beat the R.F. Staples Junior Varsity team, as there’s a bit of an inter-school rivalry there.
“I think they made a lot of good progress,” she said.
Both Nakonechny and Sturkenboom said they were really happy with the overall result of the tournament, and heard nothing but positive comments on the facility itself and the level of competition.
“I thought the tournament ran really well, with lots of positive comments,” Nakonechny said. “We had some new teams in and they were very impressed with the Spirit Centre. It’s a tremendous facility for something like that, and we’re able to accommodate four games at the same time.”
Both teams will see some more action this weekend, with the boys headed east to Thorhild looking for a little redemption, while the girls head north to Boyle for a two-day tournament up there.
