Last weekend, Yorkton Regional High School was one of twelve schools who played in the 7th annual York City Classic senior boys’ basketball tournament. YRHS and Sacred Heart High School hosted the tournament.
The YRHS Raiders senior boys’ basketball team came out on top of the tournament, winning the gold medal in the A pool.
The team went undefeated throughout the tournament.
Friday
The tournament kicked off on Friday afternoon and it would end up being a smooth day for the YRHS team.
They faced Vanier early in the afternoon, who they beat 88-55.
Friday evening’s game was against Lumsden, who they beat 83-47.
The Raiders’ head coach Jason Payne said he was pleased with his team’s performance from that day.
“I think we did a good job of controlling the tempo as best we could. We’re always focusing on defense first,” said Payne. “We did a pretty good job at creating finishing our opportunities.”
A few of Payne’s senior players stood out on the court.
“Brandt Scott does a great job for us in the middle. Dylan Sharpe is a force underneath,” he said. “And this morning Ben Koroluk shot the ball really well for us. It’s good when we can count on that grade 12 leadership in a weekend like this.”
Saturday
The first game on Saturday for the Raiders was the semi-final. They faced the Estevan Elecs early in the afternoon and took the win, which solidified their spot in the Pool A gold medal game.
Later that day, the final would see the Raiders face the Weyburn Eagles.
The gold medal game started out close, but the Eagles started to pull ahead in the second and third quarters. Eventually, their lead would reach 14 points.
But coming back onto the court for the fourth quarter, the Raiders found a spark in them.
They made basket after basket, and were able to close the score gap. In the final couple of minutes of play, the score was going back and forth by one and two points, with the teams switching for the lead.
In the end, the Raiders were able to grab and hold onto the lead to take the win. The final score was 84-82.
After the win, Payne said close games like that are the fun ones.
“I can’t make a difference on the floor anymore, but as a coach you can draw some things up that might, hopefully, make things go right,” he said. “The kids played great.”
Payne said between the third and the fourth quarter, all he told his team was to relax.
“I was trying to get them to settle down the whole game. They were really amped up. They wanted to, obviously, win at home and they just kind of needed to settle down and do their job,” he said.
Senior player Ben Koroluk had similar remarks.
“He just told us to relax and to keep our composure,” said Koroluk. “We had to slow things down and then we started to find our game, and that’s when we started to do better.”
This is the first time the Raiders have won this tournament since the 2006-2007 season, before the tournament had the 12-team format that it has now.
