Article By: Rob MasseyFERGUS – The Centennial Spartans are headed to the provincial OFSAA AAAA high school senior girls' basketball championship tournament at Windsor and Belle River later this week.
"We're all really pumped up about it," Centennial's Emma Korol said of the OFSAA berth. "It's going to be an amazing experience and we're all really excited."
The Spartans will enter the provincial high school championship tournament as CWOSSA runners-up after falling 53-33 to the Waterloo CI Vikings Saturday afternoon at Centre Wellington District High School.
"We didn't bring our game," Centennial coach Toffer Treiguts said of the final. "In the first half, we weren't awake."
Centennial trailed 20-6 after the first quarter and 36-11 at halftime as WCI outrebounded the Spartans who were a quiet bunch on defence.
"(Those are) things we've been stressing all year," Treiguts said. "They brought it and smacked us pretty good."
The final also saw WCI's press key a strong defence for most of the first three quarters before the Vikings backed off a little in the fourth quarter. That kind of defensive pressure is what the Spartans will likely see at the provincial tournament.
"We're going to practise for it," Korol said. "We have been working on it in practice because a lot of the better teams have been doing it to us and we haven't had to face it during the year. We've been working on it and hopefully it's perfected by then."
Korol led the Spartans with 10 points while Emma Cain added eight and Karsyn Buchner-Duby had six. Hannah Newman followed with five while Erin Mackey had two and Halle Milne and Carter Godman collected one apiece.
Danielle Sauve had 12 points for WCI while Olivia Bender and Kaylee Anagnostopoulos each hit for 10.
With two CWOSSA teams getting berths in the OFSAA tournament that is to start Thursday, the Spartans actually gained their berth in the provincial final by defeating the Cameron Heights Gaels of Kitchener 45-30 in Saturday's CWOSSA semifinal.
"We all played really well together as a team," Korol said of the semifinal win. "We've been working all year for it and I think we all went out wanting to win and we got it."
The OFSAA tournament will be a 16-team affair with the gold- and bronze-medal games slated for Saturday.
The Spartans will have two practices before heading to the provincial tournament.
"We'll just keep working on the things we've worked on all year and keep stressing the important things," Treiguts said.
The Grand River Renegades captured the CWOSSA AAAA junior title by defeating the Resurrection Phoenix 54-44 in an all-Kitchener final.
