SHS fall short at zones

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

The zone-hosting Strathmore High School Spartans girls basketball team played their hearts out, but fell short losing to Bert Church in the zone banner contest and the second provincial berth game to Chestermere.
The team was plagued by injuries to key players and the short bench showed at times throughout the tournament.
“The girls never gave up and we always believed that we had chance and I think we did,” said girls head coach Dion Galandy.
He believed that the game plans were executed and the girls left it all out on the court.
“I don’t know if we could have done anything differently, we just played as hard as we could and the result just was not there,” said Galandy. “The effort was there but unfortunately sometimes in sports it doesn’t end up being the way you want it to be.”
The short bench became an issue when the girls were trying to over-play the situation.
“When you have a short bench, you tend to want to do more than you think you should and so I think if anything the girls tried too hard,” said Galandy.
The compete level was there, but the girls faced a tough task of maintaining that type of play.
He was satisfied with the season other than the fact that there was no provincial trip involved.
“We didn’t meet our goals which was to medal at provincials, but what we ended up with in terms of able bodies at the end of the year, I think we’ll look back at this and say this was a great year,” said Galandy.
Boys head coach Kyle Larson thought they were right there in their two games they played at zones in Okotoks and felt that they made their opponents battle for points.
“We played HTA in out first game, who is the number three ranked team in the province. The boys competed really hard, we were down four at the half to a team that is bigger, faster, stronger and they showed that in the second half,” said Larson.
“In the second game we played George McDougall and we competed well for the first half, our youth and inexperience played a factor as well.”
Larson admits there is a bright future ahead for the boys program.
“For the boys, there is a lot to look forward to. We lose four Grade 12s this year but we have a lot of strength coming in with our 10s and 11s. Next year should be a good year as well but they’ll have to prove that,” said Larson.
Despite being young, there will be a core group of players returning next year.
“We were very young having a lot of Grade 10s on the team and out of 13 boys, nine will be returning. We’re going to have a nice starting point for next year,” said Larson.