What an amazing experience. That best describes the Pender Harbour Grade 9 girls as they wrapped their season with a trip to the provincials in Kelowna after qualifying as a wild card team.
The team included Grade 9s Solveig van Wersch, Mackenzie Stewart, Autumn la France and Alex Christian and Grade 8s Dani Pazur, Crystal Cook and Jade Storoschuk.
Pender played their first game late on Friday afternoon, and had a chance to watch action before hand.
Coach Earl Antilla said the stands were full of fans from all over making a crazy amount of noise.
"It was something we had never seen and the girls started to feel a bit nervous about our game," said Antilla. "When we did play our first game against Oak Bay, the girls started a bit slow, but picked it up in the second half by playing strong defense and driving to the hoop. We ended up losing 40-23, but it was a great result against a school 10 times our size."
That night the girls dressed up for the school spirit banquet which they had outfitted themselves from the vintage jerseys from Pender and a few trips to the dollar store.
"We had the national women's basketball coach as our guest speaker and she had many great things to say about her experiences and was very inspiring," he said.
On Saturday Pender played two games, losing 39-23 to Prince of Wales and 47-37 to Kelowna.
Against Prince of Wales, Pender trailed by only four points in the first half, but with only seven players, Prince of Wales used their bench strength in the second half to pull away.
Mackenzie Stewart led the scoring with 10 points.
Against Kelowna, Pender led by 10 after the first with some amazing rebounding from Solveig and the gritty play from the rest of the girls. In the end, Pender's small bench caught up to them they lost by 10. Solveig scored 21 points.
On Sunday Pender played their last game against another wild card team from Duncan.
The game went back-and-forth with Pender stepping up their defensive play pulling out a thrilling 29-26 win.
"The whole provincial tournament was very well organized right down to the smallest detail, they even had free physio which some of our players were grateful for," said Antilla. "We would like to thank all the parents who helped out financially and supported our team throughout the year, the PAC for donating $500 for travel costs, sponsor teachers Dave Gibson and Michele Mocellin, Paul van Wersch our number one fan and Paola Stewart for all the driving and the help with the team every game."
- Submitted
