On Feb 7th the Sr Girls basketball team headed to Bentley for a one day tournament and even after having to be on the road by 6:30 am the girls were ready to play their first game against Holy Trinity Academy from Drayton Valley winning easily with a score of 52-34. We then went onto play the home team in the semi finals and the panthers were no match for the Wildcats as we went onto win 69-46. Setting us up for a rematch against JC Charyk Hanna High who we had previously lost to by 7 points in the John Paul II tournament in Fort Saskatchewan. We were ready this time and everything was going on way. Baskets were dropping we were shutting them down on defence and we were up by 6 points at half. However in the second half the game slowly started to slip away from us as Laura Larsen committed her forth foul sending her to the bench. 1 minute after that Heather Russ rolled her ankle going up for an offensive rebound, within seconds Manie James started suffering from leg cramps and shortly after that Tiffany Horn was poked in the eye and bleeding. Thats when the game changed for us as we lost all the momentum we had. Eventually all four girls were able to make it back into the game and we went on a small run but it was to late for us to make a real comeback. We lost the game 54-61 and took home the silver medal.

After a treacherous and slow moving drive to Mayerthorpe on Friday Feb. 13th we kicked off our tournament with a great team win over Onoway who we had previously lost to in our first game of the season. The girls came together as a team and after eventually getting use to the bounce of the rims we put on the gas and did not let off winning easily 53-23. On valentines day we were set to play Grand Trunk High school who we had previously lost to on two occasions by 3 points and were a #2 provincially ranked 1A team in Alberta. The girls were ready and we knew if we could beat them we would have a great shot at winning the tournament. As we started the game we realized Grand trunk was missing their starting centre who had done alot of scoring in their previous games against us, we decided to take advantage of that and try to get them where it hurts; inside the paint. We battled the whole first half with the score not being more than a few buckets apart. In the second half we turned it up and never looked back and we created many turnovers which lead to easy buckets. The Wildcats passed the ball well and created and took advantage of great looks at the basket as we went on to win 55-41. In the final we were set to play the home team Mayerthorpe. After a slow start in the first quater the girls were down 12-6 but we knew that wasnt a big deal. Weve been down before and we know how to claw our way back into games and thats exactly what we did. Going into half the score was 20-24. At half we talked about different things we could do as a team to take the game and decided that switching up our defence to a Man to Man was the best idea and boy was it ever. Mayerthorpe who had been outworking us in finding the open shot didnt know what to do when they now had a man on them and we took advantage of of every opportunity we had. At one point during a time out when tension was high I remember asking the girls “Is anyone else sick of Silver?” and thats exactly what we needed a good laugh. From that point on I knew the game was ours and it was. We won 43-38. It was a fantastic weekend and the girls played the best basketball I have seen them play which is a great way to head into our home tournament!

Submitted by Heather Sibbald