There is only one thing in the way of the two Estevan Comprehensive School Elecs senior basketball teams to Hoopla: regionals.
And both regionals are very different for the teams, who are trying to make it to the provincial high school basketball championship, taking place in Prince Albert this year.
The boys, ranked sixth among the eight rural Saskatchewan schools in 5A, are headed to Warman this weekend where they will take on the Prince Albert Carlton Crusaders in their first match. They’ll need to beat the third ranked Crusaders and the winner of Prince Albert St. Mary Marauders and the North Battleford Comprehensive Vikings in order to reach the final of the regional tournament, and through that, Hoopla.
The girls, meanwhile, have one game to win to make it back to Hoopla this year, a home game Saturday at noon. They will play the winner of Balgonie Greenall Griffins and the Melville Cobras, who play each other Friday evening at the ECS gym.
The team warmed up for the event with a tournament last weekend in Weyburn.
“It was kind of nice, we didn’t have any pressure to perform because the ratings had all been submitted,” said assistant coach Ashleigh Dzuba. “We worked on a lot of little things, like our boxing out and rebounding which we’ve kind of been struggling with sometimes. We worked on some different offences.”
The Elecs have a lot of veterans among the girls who were at Hoopla last year when the team made it there for the first time since 2005.
“They understand the hype about it and how exciting it is to actually get there,” Dzuba said. “It’s quite an accomplishment to get there.”
The week of practice will focus on some of the fundamentals of being an athlete as well as game-specific ideas.
“We’re going to try to focus on our rebounding and our defence and try to tighten that up, so if we do make it to Hoopla, that we’ll be at our peak,” said senior guard Sammy Wade.
“We see a lot of potential with our girls and we’re really proud of them,” Dzuba said.
Melville are ranked sixth in the province’s 4A girls teams and Balgonie Greenall are 11th. The Elecs toasted the Griffins in the Shoot For A Cure tournament a couple of weeks ago but there is no preference to whom the third ranked Elecs will play Saturday.
“We’ve never seen Melville, so we don’t know what to expect,” Dzuba said. “Usually the girls do better when they see teams they haven’t played before.”
“We just have to take every game as it comes,” Wade said.
