For the first time in a long time, the winner of the men's title at the Arctic Shoot-Out basketball tournament is not from Yellowknife.They aren't even from the NWT, for that matter.
Cambridge Bay ended up walking out of the tournament with the men's crown after beating Fort Simpson by a score of 86-71 in the final on Sunday, finally earning a title they've been trying to win for several years.
Lana Bromley, the tournament's organizer, said it was close until the late game.
"I heard from the Fort Simpson players that Cambridge Bay was the fitter team," she said. "They've been coming here for so many years and they spend all that money to get here so it was nice to see them win it."
The women's final was an all-Yellowknife affair and it was a rubber match of sorts as the Kitties and the Funky Bunch met in the final for the third consecutive year. The Funky Bunch won two years ago, followed by the Kitties winning last year and it was the Kitties who ended up on top again, successfully defending their title with a sizable win in the final, 65-43.
Lisa Hall from the Kitties said it didn't feel like a game where the score wasn't in doubt.
"The score didn't reflect the closeness of the game," she said. "They lost a couple of players to injury and weren't out in full force that game but it still felt like a real tough game."
The Kitties got out to an early lead and just kept pushing the Funky Bunch, using the fast-break to their advantage as often as they could.
"We wanted to run as much as possible," said Hall. "We love to push the ball and we wanted to get on the fast-break and outrun them ... There was no let-up."
Being able to hit the fast-break was because of good defence on the back end, she added.
"Our defence was on point," she said. "We worked so well as a team and everyone just stayed positive all game long."
Just three teams competed in the women's division this year, the third team being the girls high performance squad, the newly-crowned Yellowknife Basketball Association women's champions. In contrast, the men's division fielded 11 teams.
Hall said she's hoping to get more teams for the tournament, possibly from outside the city.
"We'd love to see Whitehorse send a team or two," she said. "We've gone there in the past to play and
I'm hoping they come here. I'd like to see some NWT teams as well like they had on the men's side."
This year's tournament featured plenty of close finishes and a good share of overtime games, said Bromley, along with one game which came down to free throws at the final buzzer between the Gilas from Yellowknife and Inuvik.
"One of the Inuvik players was fouled on a three-point attempt," she said. "They were down by one and he had three free throws.
"He missed the first one but sank the next two and they pulled out the win. It was super competitive all tournament long and that made for an exciting weekend."