If first impressions are any indication it’s going to be a dogfight every night in the FAC.
The Holy Trinity Academy Knights and Oilfields Drillers put on a show with lights-out shooting and scrappy play at both ends of the floor with the hosts reigning supreme 71-68 in the bronze medal match of the Knights Classic senior girls basketball tournament Nov. 30 in Okotoks.
“They’re strong on the defence, they’re good with that and their screens,” said Knights Grade 10 Brooklyn Bonertz. “It’s almost like who wants it more, we work as a team really well right now and for our first tournament I think we played as a team super good.”
The bronze medal final came down to the final possession with the Knights earning the stop on defence after Skylar Bonertz hit a couple of free throws with 5.5 seconds left to make a one-point cushion a three-point margin.
“Our girls were tired,” said Drillers head coach James Holladay. “We play HTA again on Wednesday in league and I’m excited to play them fresh because HTA only played one game on Saturday where we played two. We were dogged and you could tell it.
“It’s good at this time of the year to work on those last minute plays and realize ‘hey these ones didn’t work, what are we going to do to adapt?”
The teams traded leads in the third-place match, particularly in the second quarter when the Drillers were hitting shots from the four-way stop in Black Diamond with guards Jocelyn Holladay and Amanda Burritt particularly dangerous beyond the arc and forwards Jocelyn Stewart and Lesley Chalmers cleaning up under the glass with 13 and 11 rebounds, respectively.
Burritt and Holladay each finished with 20 points in the contest.
Oilfields got by Chestermere and lost a tight semifinal to the McCoy Colts to land in the bronze-medal match. The Knights dispatched Sir Winston Churchill before its semifinal loss to Mt. Baker out of Cranbrook.
“We have a lot of respect for the Oilfields girls, we play them on Wednesday so it’s good to see how they can shoot,” said Knights Grade 12 guard Skylar Bonertz, who averaged 17 points per game in the tournament. “And it was really good to play Mt. Baker as well because we play them again in our next tournament.”
For Brooklyn, getting the chance to play in the Knights Classic after watching her sisters Skylar and Jordan go through the competition was a thrill as was sharing the same court with her sibling.
“It was nerve-racking,” Brooklyn said. “But really fun and cool to play with Skylar for the first time.”
The Drillers – a Grade 11 heavy squad — are no stranger to higher level competition having captured the JV South Central Zone banner last season at the 4A level.
“This year is an amazing group of girls,” Holladay said. “We’re hosting 2A provincials and we’re shooting to do well. I’ve been with some of these girls since Grade 5 and we’ve kind of moved up through the ranks.
“We’re competing at that higher level this year, 3A, 4A, for competition anyway.”
For their part, the Knights have a pretty even split amongst its age range this season with four seniors — Emily Henderson, Skylar Bonertz, Jenna Tiedje and Sawyer Harding — along with three Grade 11s and three Grade 10s.
“We’ve just been focusing on getting in-shape so we can out-run other teams,” Skylar said. “We’re pretty young, but lots of girls just want to work really hard and it’s really beneficial for us to just start new.
“I think we’re just going to have to push the ball, be super scrappy and good on defence and be a really fast team.”
The Knights are home to the Drillers in the Foothills Athletic Council opener on Dec. 4 at 5:30 p.m. Also in FAC action, the Knights host Notre Dame Collegiate at 7:15 p.m. while the Strathmore Spartans are home to Strathcona-Tweedsmuir in both boys and girls play.
For more information go to foothillsathletics.squadfusion.com
