It was a battle of Drumheller on Tuesday, March 12, as the St. Anthony’s Jr. A Boys Saints faced the DVSS Jr. A Boys Dynos in the North Golden Hills School Division League Championship.
It was quite a feat for this team as this was the first year in the Golden Hills league according to Head Coach Gavin Makse. “We’ve always wanted to get in the Golden Hills league, because typically in the past we would be in the Prairieland School Division league but they did something else a number of years ago where the would play during school time, so we had to opt out of that. Then, we were just doing exhibition games. We always wanted a league to play in, but the problem was, the league was full. This year, there was an opportunity for us to go in, so we jumped in with our Junior B Girls and Junior A Boys. We got 10 games in this year, the first year in the league, and we got to the championship game.”
Both teams were coming off success at zones, with DVSS winning Silver and St. Anthony’s falling in the Bronze medal game. Makse notes that the competition faced at zones was very high caliber. “The caliber of play was high level. Our boys did very well. We lost in the semi-finals to Red Deer Lake but we gave them the best game in the tournament. Then we lost a heartbreaker, 59-56, to Olds Koinonia in the bronze. It was good to play good competition. We were disappointed not to take home the bronze but were fortunate to have another game.” The two teams had met a couple of weeks ago and DVSS would take that matchup. St. Anthony’s was missing their starting point guard Rhett Straub and his absence was felt in that game.
In the championship game on Tuesday, St. Anthony’s would be down in the first half and Makse and his team would have to make an adjustment to turn the tides. “DVSS is a very strong team, they’ve improved all year. They are very fast and they like to push the tempo. They have a good press. We knew we had to beat the press. From there, we wanted to slow the game down, get the ball down low, work the post. Defensively for us, they were hitting a lot of 3-pointers and we weren’t guarding them. We made some adjustments at half time, and that was a big difference.”
The Saints would come away with the 62-46 victory. Makse admits that it was a great treat for his team to face their crosstown rivals for the league championship. “I’d rather play them than anyone else, keep it in Drumheller. A lot of these kids play together in other sports. It’s great to see two very strong teams in Drumheller. It’s nice to win but it was defense that won us that. Defense wins championships.”
Image courtesy of Gavin Makse
The St. Anthony’s Saints Junior A Boys team roster:
- 1 – Eli LeDrew
- 2 – Joseph Makse
- 3 – Gabe Gross
- 4 – Adam Beal
- 5 – Parth Negi
- 6 – Jayson Jensen
- 7 – Levi Fournier
- 8 – Ryder Hems
- 9 – Sean Cerventes
- 11 – Carter Burnett
- 12 – Rhett Straub
- 13 – Arkieves Arce
- 14 – Trevor Williams
- Head Coach – Gavin Makse
- Assistant Coach – Daniel Roes
Comments