Colts and Vikings b-ball gear up for South zone playoffs

By JAMES TUBB on March 11, 2022.

jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb

It’s crunch time for high school basketball in Medicine Hat.

The Crescent Heights Vikings and McCoy Colts senior boys and girls basketball teams are participating in the 3A South zone championship this weekend, hosted at McCoy. The Colts open their tournament tonight when they face the Vikings at 5 p.m. McCoy girls head coach Janice Laing said facing a rival like that in their first game makes it easier to get the team going.

“They’re almost literally across the street, the girls want to come to play, compete hard and improve,” Laing said. “It’s always fun to play a team that you’ve been neck-and-neck with through the year.”

In their first full season back from COVID-19 shutdowns, Laing said there were some learning curves throughout the year for all teams.

“You could tell across the province, every tournament we went to, you could tell that a lot of kids hadn’t competed,” Laing said.

She said their focus for the regular season was to get as many game-speed reps they could coming off last season when they could only shoot on nets.

When asked who stood out the most over the year, Laing named four players, Shelby Bitz, Alei Kuthping, Kieria Rae and Danielle Myers.

“I had about three or four them that stood out at different points throughout the season,” Laing said. “That pushed our tempo and made us better and got better every practice and game.”

As they prepare for zones, Laing said they’ll just continue to look better in the post-season games.

“We’re hoping to continue to improve from the season,” Laing said “We picked up the pace and picked up our experience level throughout the year and we’re looking to just bring what we learned throughout the year into zones.”

Vikings senior boys head coach Sterling Hamilton said he sees their first game against Winston Churchill as an opportunity he didn’t expect.

“We know if we get that win, we get the chance to possibly go to provincials, which at the beginning of the season didn’t seem likely,” Hamilton said.

He said after seasons off due to COVID-19, the Vikings entered the year with a lot of players who hadn’t played basketball since Grade 8. He said they knew there would be growing pains but the players have made some leaps from where they were because he was up front with his players.

“…Letting the guys know that we have a challenge ahead and we’re going to focus on fundamentals,” Hamilton said. “We know that our Grade 10 and 11 guys, I have them for two, three years, so we need to work on development. Wins will come but first we need to make them better basketball players. So it’s trusting the process.”

The Vikings take on Churchill at 7 p.m. with the winner of that game facing McCoy Saturday evening.

Hamilton said his players have bought in and followed their system of mental toughness and has received success from Grade 10’s like Carter Maclean, Noah Scholly and Abdul Kiawen, who was named as an all-star in the league.

“Their growth this season, we’re talking about guys who never got to play JV basketball and now they’re my starters for my senior team,” Hamilton said. “They’ve really come a long way.”

He said he’s enjoyed the year a lot more than he expected because of how much his players have bought in and credited his assistant coaches who used to play for Hamilton, Alex and Adrian Glauser, for helping players stay confident and have fun.

“Getting to see the kids return to sport and remembering the time they had off… I really enjoyed it and I feel like I really got to build a good bond with these guys this year. It’s made it really enjoyable,” Hamilton said.

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