Pride in defeat isn’t hard to come by when pushing top teams in the province to the brink.
A seesaw gold medal game saw Calgary’s Notre Dame Pride outlast a gritty effort from the host Holy Trinity Academy to close out the Knights Classic senior girls basketball competition in a 51-43 nailbiter Saturday night in Okotoks.
“Notre Dame was a provincially ranked team last year, finalists in the city in Division 1 and we didn’t have a close game with them last year,” said Knights co-head coach Andrew Gustafson.
“This game was close, it was a battle throughout and it’s a great boost of confidence for us and tells our girls that they belong with the big teams.”
The Knights clawed back to one-point deficits on two occasions, using their fast break to turn defence into offence, in the second half before the Pride took over in the late stages with an 11-3 run to close it out.
“We’re a good transition team and when we can get stops and push the pace, that’s when we’re going to start scoring buckets,” Gustafson said. “I think there’s not too many teams in the province that will keep up to our speed.”
Notre Dame point guard Chayanna Santillan took the Tournament MVP honours, HTA Grade 11 Eva Gustafson was named Most Valuable Defensive Player with Knights Grade 12 forward Ava Kaack earning the Sportsmanship Award.
“It was really cool to see how much chemistry we had even though we haven’t been practising very long,” said Sapphire Friesen, one of four Grade 12s on the Knights. “We were all encouraging each other so for a first tournament, as a whole, it was really good.
“It’s our home tournament so playing a final game in our home gym feels good. It represents our school nicely and that was our goal, to get to the final.”
In the tournament and season opener, the Knights charged past Bert Church by a 96-27 score.
Eva Gustafson had a team-best 19 points while Leah Kotze had 14 and Grade 10 Sierra Dudar poured in 11.
“That was a good test for us,” the coach added. “They’re one of our zone competitors and a team that, a team that we played in a play-in game for zones last year and we needed to see what our zone looks like.”
The semifinal saw the Knights overpower Lethbridge’s Catholic Central Cougars by a 79-58 margin.
“Last year we played them twice and split with them, they were great battles,” Gustafson said. “We’re in their tournament next week so that gives us some confidence going into that.”
Airdrie’s George McDougall Mustangs held off the Cougars 68-52 in the bronze medal match.
The Oilfields Drillers earned the consolation title with a pair of victories to close out the Classic.
After dropping its curtain raiser 58-30 to Notre Dame, the Drillers rallied to dispatch the Sir Winston Churchill Bulldogs 57-49. In the consolation final, Oilfields then got past Notre Dame’s JV squad by a 68-38 score.
Next up for HTA is an exhibition contest at Strathmore High on Dec. 5 followed by the Cal O’Brien Classic tournament held at Catholic Central in Lethbridge from Dec. 8-9.
The Knights will also be hosting a double-header of senior basketball versus the Foothills Falcons on Dec. 12 at the HTA gym.
