St. Mary School’s senior boys basketball team is off to a good start with a silver-place finish at their first tournament of the year despite only one practice.
The club headed to Boyle for the eight-team tournament Dec. 3, where it took on a junior varsity team, a 2A team and 3A team, losing by mere points in the final match to Athabasca.
“To reach a final in your first tournament after one practice is a pretty good accomplishment for our kids so we were pretty excited with the weekend we had,” said coach Darcy Romanuik.
The team started the tourney with a landslide 70-26 victory over Bonnyville’s junior varsity team from Notre Dame High School.
“It was a very encouraging start to the season,” Romanuik said.
They won their second game 57-32 versus Edson’s Holy Redeemer Catholic High School, a 2A club.
Heading into the finals, St. Mary took on a 3A team from Athabasca’s Edwin Parr Composite School, losing the final match 62-55.
“It’s very encouraging. When you can reach a final and only have one practice, it’s total optimism,” he said. “Losing is kind of good because now we know we have to work a lot harder to know where we can get to. Nothing comes without hard work and I think the kids realize we’re a good team but to be a better team we need to work harder.”
It is not likely that the Sharks will play these teams again since the team plays in the 1A division. But the coach said a win against a 2A team and a near-win against a 3A school boosted players’ spirits.
“We still have a lot of basketball left and it should be a good year for us,” he said.
Despite a strong start, Romanuik said there is still a lot of work to be done.
“If we take away the execution problems that we had over the weekend or the botched passes or fumbles or missing easy lay-ups, we have a good chance of (winning),” he said. “If anyone was able to watch our games over the weekend, the effort was there, just the execution wasn’t and that’s just because they haven’t had the repetition in practice.”
The Sharks won’t hit the court for another tournament until late in January, but they do hope to play in a few exhibition games this month. The club will head to Tofield on Jan. 27 for its first tournament of 2012.
