The senior girls Aces basketball team managed to take home the league championship title over Caroline after outlasting them 49-35.
The Aces, who were on their home court and lead by Casey Belway’s 24 points, continue to improve throughout the season.
“The girls came out really strong and took a commanding lead and then they let off the gas a little while,” Coach Cody Magneson said. “It got within four points but we ended up beating them by 14.”
The game was also an opportunity for the Aces to showcase their shooting strokes, which the young team has been developing throughout the season.
“The shooting went well,” Magneson said. “We didn’t make as many as we liked to but we kept shooting which opened it up for our posts.”
The Aces will now host basketball zones for the first time in Magneson’s 6-year tenure as athletic director on March 10-11.
“It is amazing, I have been here six years and this is the first time we hosted any zone basketball tournaments,” he said, adding “this is the first time the girls have won league in 13 years. It will be good for the girls and the basketball community in Eckville.”
With provincials taking place in Bawlf, which is in Eckville’s region - the road to provincials is clear.
“The nice things about zones is that we will likely get a wild card,” he said. “Since our region is hosting provincials, there will be three births at zones. There are two teams, Viking and Hay Lakes. We will have to knock off one of them if we want to go to provincials.”
Despite the big win at home, Magneson was disappointed to see that Caroline had an away crowd that was larger then the Eckville crowd.
“It is sad to see when the other team brings more fans - students, teachers and community members - then we do,” he said. “We want to emphasize that it isn’t just supporting basketball, it is supporting the youth that will be future community members.”
These future community members are currently working on fine tuning their skills for these upcoming important games.
“We are going to keep getting better,” Magneson said. “We have five practises before then and we will get better with each one. We will fine tune some of those skills.We know a couple of teams, so we will focus on team specific things. We will focus on ourselves to make ourselves better.”
Getting better has been a continual trend for the Aces.
“It has been an amazing year,” Magneson said. “We expected to have large numbers out this year and for some reason a lot of the girls decided not to play. That was a blow to the team but it was a blessing in disguise because we brought up the Grade 9s and they have developed nicely. Midway through the season we had a setback to injury - we battled through that and we are stronger then ever. The past 4-5 years we have been improving, it will hurt to lose Delaini [Gillett] who has been with us for a long time but it is nice to see great young athletes coming up.”
Magneson hopes to see the community out in droves for zones.
“We invite the community to come out and support,” he said. “It will be one of the biggest tournaments we host all year.”
reporter@eckvilleecho.com