NORQUAY - Our season started with a tournament on December 3/4 at Melville. We then hosted our home tournament the following weekend on December 10/11. Little did we know, our second game on Saturday December 11 would be our last for eight weeks. We had tournaments planned for most of January. However, between poor weather conditions and COVID-19, we did not play another game until February 4 at a tournament in Wynyard. Through this downtime, the girls continued to practice and stay resilient. After the tournament in Wynyard, the girls continued to improve and really come together as a team.
When playoffs hit, we advanced to conference playoffs and were able to defeat Canora in the final. At this point, we waited to hear if we would be ranked high enough to host the regional playoffs. We got the call that we were ranked #4 in the province, and as result, would host regional playoffs the following weekend. Our boys were ranked #2 in the province, and as a result, they too would host regional playoffs. To our knowledge, this had not happened before in our school history.
After winning our first game on Friday, we played for a HOOPLA berth the following day. In front of a packed gym, we were able to defeat Saskatoon Christian School – which meant we would move on to HOOPLA. The senior boy's team qualified for HOOPLA as well. This meant another historic first for our program, as this was the first time in local history that both teams qualified for HOOPLA in the same season.
Like we had faced during most of the season, we were dealt with adversity going into the HOOPLA weekend as two of our starters from our dominant regional weekend would be unable to attend. The girls dug deep during the HOOPLA weekend in Wynyard. We lost on Friday to a very dominant Wynyard girl's team. That set us up for a bronze medal game against Moose Jaw Cornerstone. Our girls led for most of the game, but ran out of gas by the end, and fell with a score of 41-45 in favor of Moose Jaw. Despite this loss, the girls continued to hold their heads high as they had a very successful season. It will go down as a season our team will never forget for so many reasons.
The team is comprised of players from both Norquay School and Sturgis Composite School. Players from Sturgis included: Trina Correos, Danika Soltys, Jordyn Blanchard, and Alexis Vidomsky. Trevor Olson who coaches the team lives in Sturgis.
Norquay players were: Lilly Kabatoff, Ashlyn Olson, Alexa Olson, Kayla Desjarlais, Haylie Kabatoff, Haylie Desjarlais, Taylor Rubletz, Talia Littlewolfe, Meah Anderson, Kortny Wasylyniuk, and Evan Rostotski (coach). Haylie Desjarlais and Kayla Desjarlais were unable to play for the team at HOOPLA.
