The third Canada Basketball age-group assessment camp in three years for Teå DeMong was the latest achievement for the superlative St. Albert Skyhawk.
“It’s nice recognition that all of your hard work is paying off,” said DeMong, a two-time Metro Athletics All-Star.
The six-foot Grade 12 Skyhawk was invited to last month’s U18 camp in Toronto after attending tryouts for U17 in 2017 and U19 in 2018.
“This is the first year where it’s actually my year so I’m the perfect age for it,” said DeMong, 17, who was joined by Yvonne Ejim of Calgary as the only Albertans at the U18 camp.
“It was a very small age group. There was 13 of us at the camp and there were a few more girls that weren’t able to attend because of concussions so all the girls got to know each other super well,” DeMong said. “The other years there was like 40 girls so this year with only 13 there was a lot more reps, a lot more one on one with the coaches and a lot more feedback.”
DeMong’s goal was to do what she does best.
“Playing my role, which is more of an aggressive attacker and shooter, and just use my height and strength advantages so go inside against smaller players and play outside against quicker players,” said the three-time All-Canadian playing for Team Alberta at nationals as a second team all-star in 2017 in U15 and 2018 in U17 and first-team all-star last year in U17 for the silver medallists.
Kamryn DeKlerk, Morgan Harris, Annacy Palmer and Mimi Sigue of the Skyhawks were also on the 2019 U17 provincial team.
Another camp in the spring will determine the Team Canada roster for the FIBA U18 Women's Americas Championship in June.
In the meantime, DeMong will lead by example as the powerhouse Skyhawks seek to three-peat as metro Edmonton division one champions before repeating as 4A provincial gold medallists.
Last year’s historic championship was the first by a St. Albert women’s basketball team at the 4A provincials.
“In Grade 10 we were like the underdogs because we had no pressure, but now we’ve got targets on our backs,” said DeMong, who played on the 2018 provincial bronze-medal winning Skyhawks along with DeKlerk and Sigue. “I like being the underdog, but it’s also nice knowing teams know you and they’re prepared to play against you. It’s a different challenge, but I really like it and we’re all excited about it.”
The 11-player roster includes eight returnees from the 30-5 Skyhawks, winners of 22 in a row to end the 2018/19 season while going 13-0 in league play.
The provincial final was the heart-pounding 66-65 thriller against of the Bishop Carroll Cardinals of Calgary as Sigue drained two absolutely clutch free throws with 25.4 seconds remaining to close out the scoring.
“It was super dramatic and we’re all super thrilled to go and do it again,” said DeMong, who led the Skyhawks in scoring in the final with 19 points, including four three-pointers, while Ejim piled up 33 points for Bishop Carroll.
Are the Skyhawks favoured to do it again this year?
“I’d say we’re the most hated for sure because people are always saying, ‘Oh, they don’t have people from St. Albert’ and all that stuff, but we’re still beating teams,” said DeMong, who started playing basketball in Grade 8 at Hinton.
Five players on the current roster played junior high hoops in St. Albert and last year’s championship team also included five homegrown players.
The Skyhawks entered the Christmas break with eight wins in nine games: 3-0 in league play and 5-1 in two tournaments as the Mike Dea Classic winners and third-place finishers at the REB Invitational.
Three victories were triple-digit results and the largest margin of victory was a staggering 77 points in the 111-34 dismantlement of the Paul Kane Blues in the Mike Dea final.
“We got into it a bit slower this year. We were winning, but it wasn’t the wins that we wanted. It was like we were going through the motions,” said DeMong, who missed four games because of the assessment camp and one of them was the 76-68 loss to the Western Canada Redman of Calgary in the REB semifinal that pumped the brakes on a 28-game winning streak that started following back-to-back losses at the 2018 REB Invitational with DeMong, Harris and Palmer unavailable because of age-group assessment camps.
“Going into the second half we don’t want to be complacent, that’s our biggest focus,” DeMong said. "We definitely struggled with that in the first half of the season. We were all complacent. Even though we were scoring we were still making 20 turnovers a game against teams we shouldn’t be doing that against.
“We want to play more like how we want play and win how we want to win.”
This weekend the Skyhawks are competing at the Coyote Classic at Centennial High School in Calgary with games scheduled against the Bowness Trojans of Calgary, Lethbridge Collegiate Institute Rams and the Semiahmoo Totems of Surrey, the defending B.C. AAA champions. The Totems are coached by Allison McNeill, the former Team Canada women’s bench boss.
“We know we have to play our best to win these games. They’re not going to come easy like some of the other wins,” said DeMong, who is committed to the University of Saskatchewan Huskies.
League play resumes Monday against the Salisbury Sabres (3-0) at 5 p.m. in Sherwood Park.
