The R.F. Staples Thunderbirds boys’ basketball team played several impressive matches during last weekend’s tournament in Barrhead and came home with a silver medal.
This was not the ideal result, coach Jon Hutchison said, but he was pleased with the way the team performed.
“I’m happy. I was kind of hoping for gold, but it’s good,” he said.
Westlock played the host Gryphons in the gold-medal match, but got off to a slow start and couldn’t keep up with their opponents, ultimately losing the game 62-37.
“We rallied back, but when it’s the end of the third and the fourth quarter it’s a little bit late when you’re down 30 points Hutchison said.
The real highlight of the tournament, for him, was Saturday afternoon’s 50-48 victory over Beaverlodge, which put the Thunderbirds into the final.
“Winning against Beaverlodge was a pretty big win for us, because between the end of the second quarter and end of the third quarter, we went on a 24-0 run,” he said. “We were down 16 points, then we went up by eight on them. Beaverlodge is a very tough team, so to me that was a very good game to win and it shows a lot of grit by our guys.”
Unfortunately, the match left the Westlock players fairly tired and they didn’t play their best in the final match.
“We were chipping away and chipping away, but it’s pretty tough when we gave everything we had to beat Beaverlodge then we played Barrhead,” Hutchison said. “We just didn’t have much energy left.”
The Friday evening game against Vermilion’s J.A. Robson School was also a fairly close match until the T-Birds blew things wide open in the second half.
“It was a really tight game all the way through until we went on a 16-0 run and we ended up winning by 16 points against them,” Hutchison said. “In the fourth quarter we kind of turned the lights on, started digging deep and really taking it to them.”
The T-Birds will play a few exhibition games, but won’t have any more formal tournaments until zones in Spruce Grove March 9-10, and Hutchison said after putting in some good practice time over the next few weeks, he likes the team’s chances.
“We’re going to work a lot on our fast break, penetrating the defence and taking it to the hoop,” he said. “I think the guys played very well this weekend and we’ll be ready for zones.”
