After a monumental comeback in their semifinal, the St. Mary senior boys basketball team simply ran out of gas en route to a second-place finish at the North Central 1A zone tournament over the weekend.
The Sharks lost the final 70-45 to Drayton Valley’s Holy Trinity, but for coach Darcy Romanuik the most impressive game was the 67-66 semifinal win over Evansburg.
In the early stages, the game had the look of a pending blowout, as the Sharks only had three points at the end of the first quarter, and things were looking bleak.
“We were actually down 33-9 to one point,” Romanuik said. “But we ended up coming back to win 67-66.”
While clawing back from 24 points down is one thing, he said the final few seconds was quite the nail biter.
With only 1.7 seconds to play, the Sharks led by three.
Evansburg took possession and threw up a three-pointer.
The shot failed to drop, but the ref called a foul, meaning the Evansburg shooter was given three foul shots — one for each point his initial shot was worth.
“If he sinks all three, we go to overtime,” Romanuik recounted. “He made the first. He made the second. Then, it bounced out on the third.”
With no time left on the clock, the Sharks escaped with the one-point victory.
The win sent the Sharks on to meet Holy Trinity, but the effort the boys needed to get there was simply too much for them to put up too much of a fight.
Try as they might, they simply couldn’t stay with their opponents, losing by 25 points.
In their opening game, the Sharks “handily” knocked off New Sarepta, 71-45.
Despite the end result, Romanuik said he was happy with how the Sharks performed at the tournament — it was the first time the team had qualified for a zone final since 2007, and was one of very few tournament finals the boys played in all season.
“We probably played our best basketball at the best possible time,” he said.
However, he said all the hard work his team put into the season and improving their skills deserved a better reward than falling hard in a tournament final.
“I just wish for the boys’ sake we could have made it that extra step,” Romanuik said. “But it was not meant to be.”
The St. Mary senior girls team put up a valiant fight in a conference game against Warburg, but came up on the wrong end of a 55-51 final score, missing a chance to qualify for zones in the process.
Coach Peter Molesky said his girls were able to hang around most of the game, but in the late stages ran out of energy and saw the game slip away.
As had been the case all season, the primary culprit was the team’s depth — there were only six players on hand for the Sharks, while their opponents had 12 girls at their disposal.
It meant as the game wore on, the Sharks gradually grew tired, while Warburg could rest its best players for when the game got to crunch time.
The loss was disappointing for both the girls and Molesky.
“We had high hopes for zones, even though we probably would not have won them,” he said.
Having a short bench all year should bode well for next season, Molesky said. With only six players available, the girls played a lot of minutes and got lots of experience in multiple game situations.
If he can harness that experience and add a few more bodies next year, Molesky said the team has a good shot at doing some damage.
