The St. Mary School Sharks senior basketball team took second place at the weekend’s W.J. Kallal Memorial tournament at the Westlock Rotary Spirit Centre.
It was the fourth time the Sharks have taken silver this year.
“We’re not an old team, but not a young team, mostly Grade 11, and we need to learn how to close out games,” said coach Darcy Romanuik. “This was our fourth tournament of the year and our fourth second place finish, so it’s kind of getting old being a bridesmaid,” he said.
Due to bad roads, their first game on Friday afternoon was a no-show by Hinton’s Gerard Redmond Community Catholic School.
The default left the Sharks fresh for their second game of the round robin.
Game 2 was played on Saturday morning and the Sharks quickly jumped to a commanding lead against Holy Trinity from Drayton Valley.
By the end of the first quarter the Sharks were up 20-3.
But small mistakes and a rush of soft fouls saw Holy Trinity come back and the final score line was a much more competitive 55-43.
“We had a sizable lead against Drayton Valley and we let them back in the game,” Romanuik said.
“That game was closer than it should have been”.
It was enough to get St. Mary through to the final against Redwater, but history repeated itself in a number of ways.
Again the Sharks jumped out to a big lead, and again fouls and lack of pressure let the opposition back into the game.
This time it was fatal, and when the final buzzer sounded, St. Marys found themselves on the bad side of a 47-49 defeat.
“We were up 42-28 with about eight minutes left in the fourth and had everything under control,” Romanuik said.
“We got a little complacent, and kudos to Redwater, they came back”.
“They hit some free-throws, we got a little lazy on defence and on offence we went stone cold,” he said. “We just couldn’t do anything offensively, they just shut us down for some reason.”
