They are a young team playing against older players.
The Humboldt Collegiate Institute started a Senior Girls' Developmental Basketball team this season.
"The team that has been playing is a team with mainly Grade 9s and some Grade 10s," said coach Cory Popoff.
The team plays in two leagues - the senior girls' league and the junior girls' league.
"The purpose of the developmental team is to engage as many Grade 9s and 10s as possible in basketball," said Popoff.
There is also a senior girls' competitive team, that plays most weekends in tournaments.
"Of course, having two senior teams, having one senior competitive and one senior non-competitive, there isn't enough coaches to go around," said Popoff. "The question is with two coaches, how can you best involve the most amount of kids?"
So far, the season is going well for the developmental team.
"Our girls are developing as expected and I look forward to the next year when our Grade 9 girls go into Grade 10 as they will have a lot of game experience, especially at the senior level," said Popoff.
He explained if they get more girls involved in the developmental team now, it will keep them playing the sport in the future.
"The theory behind it is to develop girls and keep them involved in the program for longer than one year, just so they can get more experience and hopefully compete at the senior competitive level," said Popoff. "The goal of the program is to ensure when they compete for a senior competitive spot they will have enough game experience and skill development to make them into a good basketball player."
His team is extremely competitive in the junior league and they play well against many of the senior teams.
"Sometimes there are older girls on the other teams with a couple years experience in skills," said Popoff.
Since this is the first year they have tried having a developmental and competitive team, Popoff explained it is something they will have to look at at the end of the season.
"It is different than it was in previous years," said Popoff. "We will look at it at the end of the year and re-evaluate the program and see if it was a good decision for kids or if we need to tweak some things."
