No better time than now to make a little school history.
The Strathcona-Tweedsmuir Spartans won their first game in zone competition in nearly half a decade when they edged Holy Cross Collegiate en route to a fourth-place finish at the 2A South Central Zone Senior Girls Basketball Championships in Black Diamond.
“It’s great for our school. For years we fell off the map for girls basketball,” said Spartans head coach Ken Zelez. “Last year we went into zones as the eighth-place team and came out eighth.
“This year we got in on our own merit, we came in fifth and left as fourth with two other very good opportunities to come in with a medal.”
The Spartans scratched and clawed their way back to edge Holy Cross by a 53-52 count in a dramatic tournament opener on March 11.
STS trailed by as much as 10 points in the second-half before shutting it down on defence and finding timely baskets on offence.
The victory advanced the squad to a semifinal showdown with the top-ranked J.C. Charyk Hawks out of Hanna. An upset was in the cooking as the Spartans carried a 12 point advantage at the break only to lose 52-48 to the eventual zone champion.
“We totally could have won that one,” the coach added. “Hanna come out in the second half with the press and they haven’t pressed all year.
“It wasn’t that we couldn’t beat the press, we just couldn’t follow through out of the press.”
The Spartans and Prairie Christian Academy Sabres then met in the third-place contest which again went down to the wire in a 59-51 triumph for the Three Hills based school.
Spartans senior forward Nikita Srivalsan was the leader all weekend while Grade 10 Evelien Boerstra also impressed at the tournament.
The historic finish has the Spartans dreaming big for the future.
“We’re just going to be stronger and stronger,” Zelez said. “Our young players are pretty committed. Success breeds success and anytime you can get some decent results it becomes contagious and people want to be a part of that.”
The Foothills’ other entry in the zone also finished above its ranking.
The host Oilfields Drillers shook off an opening defeat to post a respectable sixth-place finish.
Oilfields, the seventh seed entering the competition, dropped its opener 83-43 to the powerful St. Joseph’s Collegiate Crusaders out of Brooks to drop into the B-bracket.
From there, the black-and-gold edged High River’s Notre Dame Collegiate 48-42 to advance to the B-final versus Holy Cross.
The Strathmore squad would reign supreme, squeaking out a 37-36 result to earn the fifth spot.
