O’Leary High School – Haunted by the loss to the Archbishop MacDonald Marauders in league play, the Sturgeon Spirits exorcised their demons in Friday’s rematch for the championship.
“Everybody definitely rose to the challenge today,” Grade 11 point guard Brie Gray said after winning the metro Edmonton city conference varsity women’s final 64-52. “We peaked in this game, that’s for sure. All season we’ve been struggling and this time we played really, really good.”
Unlike the low scoring 35-30 contest Feb. 1, in which the Spirits registered a putrid five points in the first half, they got into a groove offensively against the defensively challenged Marauders.
“We didn’t turn the ball over nearly as much as we did when we first played them,” Gray said. “We played really hard D this time and caused them to turn it over instead of us, and because of that we got lots of points off fast breaks.”
Up by one at halftime the Spirits switched things around and the move paid off as they outscored the Marauders 19-9 in the third quarter to lead 50-39.
“We played a lot of zone in the first half and they got some good shots away, but once we went with a man defence we held up our own pretty well,” said Grade 12 post Kelsey McCormack, Sturgeon’s top scorer with 21 points.
After the Marauders started the second half with a bucket the Spirits tacked up 10 straight points and never looked back. Leading up to the scoring spree were blocks by Castell Van Paridon and McCormack as the Spirits came up with a couple of big stops defensively before pulling away on the scoreboard.
Gray, 16, recorded nine of her 17 points in the decisive third quarter. Her second three-pointer of the quarter, and the team’s third three-ball in the period, was a buzzer beater at quarter time to put the Spirits ahead by 11.
“We usually play zone but when we picked up a man that caused a lot of turnovers and we got so many points off that,” Gray said.
In the first quarter McCormack paced the attack with 12 points while the Marauders did most of their damage with three three-balls.
Trailing by six in the second quarter the Spirits generated seven unanswered points to end the half, culminating with a baseline move for a bucket by Van Paridon with 10 seconds remaining.
In the fourth quarter, after the Marauders closed the gap 50-48, a free throw by Van Paridon with 5:44 to play was Sturgeon’s first point of the period. It also triggered a run of eight points. A bucket by Van Paridon after a defensive gem by McCormack, a six-foot, two-way standout, left the Marauders reeling, trailing 55-48.
Prior to Van Paridon’s score, Grade 12 guard Jo-ann Selman fouled out with 6:22 to play.
Van Paridon finished the game with 17 points, including a momentum-shifting three-pointer in the third quarter.
Seven of Sara Haring’s nine points came from the free throw line.
“We played really hard all the way through,” McCormack said. ‘We came in knowing what we had to do. We came out with a couple of different strategies and performed really well.”
The championship capped off an interesting season for the Red Devils. They placed fourth out of 15 teams at 11-3 (one win was a 2-0 default score) with the lowest points against in the conference.
The Marauders (12-2) finished third and in the semifinals knocked off the Beaumont Bandits (13-1) by five points. The first-place Leduc Tigers (14-0) bowed out in the quarter-finals in a one point loss to the eight-place Christ The King Chargers (7-7).
“Winning this championship is a huge deal for us,” McCormack said. “We had a little bit of a slump in the middle of the year but we started peaking at the right time.”
McCormack, 17, Gray, Van Paridon and Selman are the only returning players on the roster from the 2009 Optimist Showdown in St. Albert tournament winners and premier semifinalists while going 6-10 overall in league play.
“I’m really proud of all the girls. We worked so hard together and to finish the year off with a championship is great,” McCormack said.
It also marked the last game for longtime head coach Trent Anderson, the architect of three city championships in four trips to the final in five years.
“It’s bittersweet,” Anderson said. “It’s a great group of girls who worked hard all year and they pulled it together in the end.”
