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Skyhawks best of the best

The 22nd win in a row during a 30-5 banner season for the St. Albert Skyhawks was the 4A provincial high school women's basketball final against the Bishop Carroll Cardinals of Calgary as Mimi Sigue drained two free throws with 25.4 seconds remaining for the championship victory Saturday at Jasper Place.

Jasper Place – Mimi Sigue didn’t blink with a provincial championship staring the St. Albert Skyhawks in the eyes.

The centre of attention at the free throw line embraced the challenge with 25.4 seconds left in the 4A provincial high school basketball final and the Skyhawks down by one point to the Bishop Carroll Cardinals of Calgary.

“I was ready to win this game. I was like super hyped,” said Sigue, still vibrating with excitement while replaying the thrill of a lifetime during the post-game celebrations Saturday night.

Sigue was cool as ice breaking Bishop Carroll’s hearts with the pair of daggers while the Skyhawks rejoiced over the 66-65 go-ahead points.

“I wasn’t thinking anything to be honest. I was just shooting,” Sigue said. “It was like routine, just shoot the ball after my three dribbles and then swish.”

Sigue shook off a heavy foul in the paint by Bishop Carroll star Yvonne Ejim to score the most important points of the season for the Skyhawks if not in team history.

“I was mad at Yvonne for blocking my shot so I was like I’m going to leave it all on the court,” said the rough-and-tumble Grade 11 post who had to pick her crumpled body up off the floor after Ejim’s heavy-handed foul and needed a few seconds to compose herself before winning the final in dramatic style.

“It’s crazy. You only think about this as a kid and to be that kid right now it’s insane,” said Sigue, who clutched up mightily inside a gym thick with intensity as the overflow crowd and players from both teams watched with trepid anticipation of the defining moment in the final.

“I wasn’t breathing,” said Teá DeMong, a prime-time Skyhawk who whipped up 19 points and contributed to a defensive stop on Bishop Carroll’s last possession to complete the championship conquest.

“Obviously, without those free throws by Mimi we wouldn’t have won but they fell,” DeMong said. “Was it exciting? More like nerve-wracking. Everyone’s nerves were just so high.”

Sigue’s forte is banging bodies in the paint for rebounds and low post buckets while free throws have been somewhat of a work in progress.

“I air balled my free throws the last game (73-41 over the Jasper Place Rebels in Friday’s semifinal) so this was a big step up swishing two in a row,” said Sigue, who finished the final with 12 points.

Head coach John Dedrick heaped praise on Sigue’s ability make the free throws under duress.

“Mimi has improved her foul shooting so much since a year ago. When she was in Grade 10, a team’s defence against her was to foul her and put her on the line because she is such a physical specimen that teams have a tough time handling her, so I said you need to work on your foul shooting and you’ve got to be able to hit foul shots when it matters because teams are going to foul you, so for her to come through and hit two foul shots after getting knocked to the ground was awesome. It speaks volumes about her and I’m super proud,” Dedrick said.

The final still wasn’t a done deal with the Skyhawks back on top.

“After the second free throw, I was like I’ve got to back and play good defence. We have to win this,” said Sigue, a Skyhawk on a mission late in the final by scoring the team’s last six points including the offensive rebound to make it 62-59 with 2:50 to go and was on the receiving end of a great pass by Kamryn DeKlerk while uncovered in the paint to deposit the ball through the hoop to put the Skyhawks up 64-60 with 1:42 to play.

“After I got my fourth foul (with 15 seconds left in the third quarter and the Skyhawks ahead 51-49) I came off. I had to recollect myself and I came back in ready to win and nothing else,” Sigue said.

Bishop Carroll called a time out after Sigue’s second free throw and on the ensuing inbound play, the Skyhawks clamped down defensively around Ejim, the top scorer in the final with 33 points. As time ticked down, the Cardinals tried to thread a pass through traffic, but DeMong and company forced the turnover and DeKlerk happily dribbled the ball while skipping down the sideline in front of the euphoric Skyhawks Nation section of supporters before turning the corner toward the overjoyed team bench waiting for her arrival.

“Lots of tears. Everyone was super hyped,” DeMong said of emotional group hug at the buzzer.

Golden game

The final was too good to be true for fans of both teams as the No. 1 Skyhawks and No. 2 Bishop Carroll exchanged countless lead changes, big shots (three-pointers were seven apiece) and defensive stops like two heavyweight fighters going nose-to-nose while looking to land the knockout punch.

“There was pressure because we were number one but everyone was expecting the other team to win because of Yvonne. She’s an amazing player so I think a lot of people thought we wouldn’t pull it off because of her,” Sigue said of her U17 provincial teammate at the 2018 nationals who also played for last year’s U17 national team.

The six-foot-two Grade 11 Ejim, the top rebounder at nationals averaging 8.8 boards and the second-highest scorer with 14.4 points per game as a second-team All-Canadian, piled up 33 points, including 13 in the first quarter as Bishop Carroll led 23-18 at the end of the period on the strength of three three-pointers.

The Skyhawks held the lead once in the opening 10 minutes as Annacy Palmer’s three-pointer put the count at 14-12 halfway through the quarter.

In the second quarter, DeMong sank three three-pointers while Ejim dropped a pair of three-balls on the Skyhawks.

Back-to-back three-pointers by DeKlerk and DeMong were followed by the buzzer-beating three-ball by Ejim for 21 points in the first half that lifted Cardinals into the 38-36 lead at the break.

DeMong’s fourth and last three-pointer of the final kicked off the third quarter as the Skyhawks threatened to pull away. Dakota Wedman’s layup put the Skyhawks ahead by five points 2:30 into the period. Palmer’s steal and layup and DeKlerk’s end-to-end dashing layup less than a minute apart made it 51-42 with just over five minutes left until quarter time. Another basket by Wedman left Bishop Carroll trailing by six with 2:11 to go before the period ended with the Skyhawks in front 53-49.

A basket by Morgan Harris early in the fourth quarter left the Skyhawks peaking at 55-49. However, Bishop Carroll roared back with seven in a row, triggered by Ejim’s fourth three-pointer of the final. A series of misses by the Skyhawks also contributed to the comeback charge by Bishop Carroll.

Palmer knotted it at 57 with a pair of free throws and Ejim’s short jumper restored Bishop Carroll’s lead at 59-57 with 3:38 to play.

DeKlerk’s second three-pointer of the final and a mammoth offensive rebound by Sigue 51 seconds apart propelled the Skyhawks back into the lead at 62-59 with 2:50 remaining.

It was 64-60 when Ejim scored off an inbound play with 1:08 on the clock.

With 51.1 to go, Ejim was fouled and she hit the second attempt to make it a one-point contest. The Skyhawks then called a time out and on the inbound play DeKlerk’s pass was disrupted and Bishop Carroll set up shop in the Skyhawks’ zone but Ejim’s three-point attempt missed the mark. However, Bishop Carroll managed to regain possession and on another inbound play Isabella Faba was fouled and at the free-throw line showed nerves of steel by sinking both shots for the 65-64 lead with 28.2 on the clock.

And the rest is history.

“We weren’t playing our best game. We let Yvonne cut to the rim even though our game plan was not to let her do that so it was pretty frustrating, but we stuck together as a team which got us the W,” said Sigue, 16.

“It was all team. No matter if you were on the bench or if you were on the floor, every single person contributed to this win today,” DeMong stressed, noting “Bodies were flying everywhere and there were some tough calls that we had to fight through but we still played our game and we did it.”

DeKlerk, who also played for Alberta at U17 nationals last year along with DeMong, tacked up 14 points and Palmer netted 13 in the rubber-match between the top-two 4A teams in the province.

Bishop Carroll downed the Skyhawks 64-42 in the third-place game at the season-opening tournament, District Four Invitational in Calgary.

“They’ve got a team that obviously has a stud in Yvonne, but then they got other solid players like Sofia (DiGiacomo with nine points), who is going to Grant MacEwan, and they got other girls that have played a lot together so maybe they don’t have the provincial team players’ status, but they have great club basketball coaching and they played together so that kind of team chemistry makes them hard to compete against, so we had to find a way to win and we were able to do that,” Dedrick said of last year’s provincial silver medallists.

The TSN turning point in the season for the Skyhawks was the 73-53 dismantlement of Bishop Carroll in the semifinal of the Paul Kane Invitational before tearing apart the Paul Kane hosts 84-40 in the final.

“Our punch-back game against Bishop Carroll was a good one for us just because we knew they pumped us pretty good in early December, so for us to be able to compete and to kind of return the favour against them that was probably what kind of set us up for being ranked number one,“ said Dedrick of the Skyhawks, listed No. 1 in all three Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association ranking periods leading up to provincials.

“It’s subjective, all the rankings and stuff like that. We had never played Western (Canada Redhawks of Calgary, the bronze medallists), we had never played Centennial (Coyotes of Calgary, last year’s provincial champions), we never played Magrath (Pandas) and those are three teams out of the top six (in the third ASAA rankings of the season) and I told the girls that we’re number one but we haven’t played everybody. If we played everybody and won then it’s different.

“We knew that we would have a target on our backs based on who we are and who the players are, but we just said OK, every team is going to come at us hard and we can't afford to take a practice off, we can't afford to take games off and we try to have a good tough tournament schedule but it came down to simply trusting the process. I told the girls just stay true to yourselves. If you get the ball in a spot where you hit shots in then I expect you to take it. We try and share the ball as much as possible. We run a drill called one more pass where we make that extra pass to our teammates and I think that was evident today where we gave it up to certain players and tried to make things happen with that,” Dedrick said.

30-5 record

The 22nd victory in a row was also the 30th in 35 games for the Skyhawks after going 29-7 last year as bronze medallists. This year’s roster consists of six returnees, including three Grade 12s in Bella Cuciz, Kyleigh Kornak and Kaya Vandermeer.

“All of our training and the hard work that we put in paid off,” said DeMong, a Grade 11 scoring machine on par with Ejim as one of the very best high school players in the province as the 2018 Metro Athletics all-star and second team All-Canadian at U17 nationals. “Our goal was obviously to get to this point so we definitely went through some highs and lows. We were not like always super confident but going in to this, we had to believe we could do it and we did.”

The Skyhawks bolted into the final after manhandling the No. 16 Charles Spencer Mavericks of Grande Prairie 92-29 in the round of 16 and the 78-27 stomping of the No. 9 St. Mary’s Saints of Calgary in the quarter-finals before pounding the No. 4 Rebels 73-41 in the semifinals.

“I still think we have another gear we can go into. We can play some better basketball. It’s been really good but we can still do better,” DeMong said after Friday’s spirited affair with the Rebels.

“Both teams wanted it so bad. It was personal, you know,” said DeMong of the “scrappy little plays” in the third win of the season against the Rebels, including the lopsided 69-49 metro Edmonton division one repeat for the 13-0 Skyhawks in league play.

The last loss for the Skyhawks was 66-52 to the Rebels in the Dec. 15 third-place game at the 37th annual REB Invitational at Jasper Place. DeMong, Palmer and Harris didn’t play in the REB because of commitments with the women’s national age-group assessment camps in Toronto.

The Skyhawks posted period leads of 22-9, 40-19 and 56-31 with a show of force that rattled a Rebels’ lineup of seven returnees and no Grade 12s.

DeMong dialed up 10 of her 19 points in the second quarter while Palmer drained 15 in total and DeKlerk had 12. The trio of Skyhawks also poured in timely three-pointers that sucked the wind out of the Rebels’ sails.

Defensively, the Skyhawks overpowered the Rebels everywhere on the court and Sigue, who suffered a couple of hurtful spills battling for the ball in the paint, was a workhorse in that department. It also took a physical toll on Sigue, who was noticeably limping on a wonky ankle after the semifinal and throughout the final.

“We came out really strong. We definitely wanted to keep the lead at a comfortable distance. We didn’t want anything closer,” said DeMong, 16. “Coming in (to provincials) as the number one seed we know that doesn’t mean anything. Both teams wanted it really bad so we knew we had to work our hardest. It wasn’t going to come easy.

“Number one doesn’t mean anything to us right now with the final tomorrow.”

The Skyhawks will go down in history as the greatest high school women’s basketball team ever assembled in St. Albert in year six at the 4A level for St. Albert Catholic High School after stacking together four consecutive 3A provincial championships.

“It’s a special team, obviously. These are all girls that dedicate themselves to making themselves better and they love to play basketball and that’s why they’re on our team, that’s why they’re playing for us and for them to culminate a great season against an outstanding Bishop Carroll team with this type of win, for Mimi to hit two free throws under pressure, it just speaks volumes about trusting the process so I’m super proud of them,” Dedrick said.

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