There's no better motivation for a team to win a game than losing a game you should have won before.
That's what the Deton Cho Eagles girls high performance basketball did at the Centennial Howler Tournament in Calgary this past weekend.
photo courtesy of Benji Straker
The Eagles, playing as Sir John Franklin High School in the tournament due to stipulations against club teams entering, finished with a record of one win and two losses when the dust settled. The win came against Diefenbaker High School of Calgary in convincing fashion, a 40-point drubbing.
Everything started off against Centennial High School of Calgary, the host team, and it wasn't the best game the girls have ever played, according to head coach Aaron Wells.
“Centennial is the best high school team in Calgary and we were outmatched,” he said. “It was an intense atmosphere and the nerves were there. We would have been in tough any other day of the week.”
How intense was the atmosphere? Spotlights for the player introductions and a marching band belting it out the entire game, said Wells.
“They were excited to have a team from the NWT there,” he said. “I thought it was a great atmosphere and an awesome experience for the girls to be a part of.”
Next up was Holy Trinity Academy from Calgary and it ended up being another loss but not even close to what the Centennial experience was.
As Wells described it, it was a very winnable game.
“We ended up losing by six points and it was a good game for us,” he said. “There was about eight or 10 lead changes and we played great.”
The problem, he said, was that the girls ended up going basket-for-basket with Holy Trinity, something that didn't have to happen in the waning minutes.
“We were down five with about three minutes left and we just couldn't get the stops when we needed them,” he said. “We needed a basket-stop instead of basket-for-basket.”
So with that game being used as motivation, the Eagles came out the next morning and laid it on Diefenbaker's squad thick.
Wells said it was a huge character game considering it was early in the day.
“It's an 8 a.m. game on Saturday morning and you never know how those games will go,” he said. “The girls just came out guns blazing. We pressed them in the early going and got some steals, which turned into fast-breaks. They were all locked in.”
Taya Straker, one of the youngest players on the team, was named player of the game.
“Losing that second game fired them up big time,” said Wells.
Once the business of tournament basketball was completed, the girls got the chance to hang out with the University of Calgary's women's basketball team on the Sunday. They watched a practice and once that was over, the girls got to chat with some of the players about university life.
Wells said the girls also got some on-court practice time with Matt Spencer, the school's assistant coach.
“One session was for the entire team and another was with the top-level players,” he said. “It was real good for the girls to be able to get in a couple of developmental sessions.”