Senior girls' basketball teams from area high schools came, saw and conquered in recent tournament play.
Despite coming in as the lowest seed in their most recent tournament, the Creighton Kodiaks senior girls’ basketball team are northeast Saskatchewan league champions.
The Kodiaks’ senior girls' team headed to Nipawin for a midweek tournament Feb. 15, playing in the league championship for the North East Saskatchewan Sports Athletic Conference (NESSAC). The league is supposed to include four teams from northeast Saskatchewan, but Creighton is located too far from the other three communities - Hudson Bay, Nipawin and Tisdale - to play against them in league play. In the four-team tournament, the Kodiaks would be included, but would be seeded in fourth-place and have to play tough competition immediately.
That first-place team would be Nipawin’s L.P. Miller Bears, who won the right to host the win-and-you’re-in, loser-goes-home tournament. The Kodiaks, despite the low seed, would throw the bracket in the trash quickly, tripling up points on Nipawin and beating them 54-18 in their own gym.
The win would push the Kodiaks into the tournament final, where they would play the Tisdale Middle & Secondary School Tornados. With the league title on the line, Creighton knocked down Tisdale almost as hard as they did Nipawin, beating them 60-29 and taking the NESSAC title.
The Kodiaks will look ahead to the conference tournament March 10-11, which will be played in Langenburg. The tournament winner will move into regional play a week later, with the winners of regionals heading to Saskatchewan’s provincials - the HOOPLA tournament - in late March.
Hapnot
Hapnot’s senior Kweens put their perfect record on the line Feb. 17-18 in Warren during the Warren Wildcats Varsity Girls tournament. Going into the tournament, the senior Kweens were ranked seventh in the latest Manitoba High Schools Athletic Association (MHSAA) provincial rankings - the host Wildcats were ranked third.
To open the tournament, the Kweens faced their now-traditional foes, The Pas’ Margaret Barbour Collegiate (MBCI) Spartans. The teams had faced each other twice already this season, with Hapnot beating them both times, both in tournament finals. The Kweens made it an even 3-0 against The Pas, beating them 61-27 and moving into the semifinals.
From there, the Kweens faced the Carman Cougars, ranked fifth in the province in the most recent rankings. That game would be close and the Kweens would go down at one point, but fought back to take a 56-53 win and enter the finals, against the host Wildcats.
The seventh-ranked team in the province playing the third-ranked team in the province - in the third-ranked team’s home gym, no less - would make the casual reader think the Kweens entered the game as underdogs. Underdogs or not, though, Hapnot didn’t play like that - they dealt one of the province’s top teams a 72-45 beatdown, winning their fifth straight tournament and entering their zone tournament with a flawless 18-0 record.
The Kweens’ Gianna Watt was named as tournament MVP, while point guard Shanti Church was named to the tournament’s all-star team.
The Hapnot senior Kings were also in action down south, playing in the Neepawa Invitational Feb. 17-18. In their first game, the Kings faced Norway House’s Helen Betty Osborne Ininiw Education Resource Centre (HBOIERC) Huskies and handed their fellow northerners an 89-24 loss. Entering the semifinals, the Kings would play the Crocus Plains Plainsmen from Brandon, a AAAA school much larger than Hapnot. Nonetheless, the Kings proved that size didn’t matter, beating the Plainsmen 65-58 and entering the tournament final.
There, the Kings would face the Neelin High School Spartans, also from Brandon. Neelin boasts a Grade 9-12 enrollment of 700 kids - Hapnot, by contrast, has 230 in total. The clock would strike midnight for the Kings’ Cinderella run against Neelin, who knocked off the northerners 80-48, claiming the title.
Hapnot’s junior varsity teams will participate in zone tournaments this weekend, with the girls playing their tournament at Hapnot and the boys playing at Frontier Collegiate in Cranberry Portage. The girls’ tournament will take the form of a five-team, double knockout bracket - the Kweens will face off against the HBOIERC Huskies in their first game, with a spot in provincials awaiting the tournament winner.
