Article By: Rob Massey
GUELPH – The Bishop Macdonell Celtics are
going to have to spread the wealth around if they're to repeat as
District 10 high school senior girls' basketball champions this season.
"This is the first year where we haven't had
somebody where we lean on them to do everything," Bishop Mac coach
Karen Bremner said. "It's a little more, in essence, a team where we're
scoring by committee, we're bringing the ball up by committee and we're
defending by committee, which in some senses is a healthier thing. It's
just something that we haven't had to deal with and we're trying to
figure out what our identity is at this point."
"Our team values have not changed at all,"
Celtics' returnee Rachael DiGravio said. "Pretty much nothing has
changed except that all of us have a bigger role on the team. All of us
know when to take responsibility, but our team dynamic, nothing has
changed. We still have the same values as we did last year. We still
have the team concept."
The Celtics opened their regular season
Tuesday with a 50-27 victory over the host Lourdes Crusaders, the
visitors pulling away in the fourth quarter by adding 12 points to the
gap.
Bishop Mac had 10 players suited up for the
game and nine of them scored, but nobody hit double digits and that's
likely to be the case all season long.
Cindy Seke led with eight points while Ellie
Young had seven and Christine Sullivan, Tianna Sullivan, Dianne Priamo
and Marcela Gadzinska netted six apiece.
Rainey Psenicka topped the scoring list for
Lourdes with nine points while Brin Krueger and Katarina Moran added
four each.
This year's version of the Celtics is also
lacking the tall players that they've had the past four or five seasons.
"I'd say we're a more athletic team than we
have been in the past," Bremner said. "I don't know if we're faster, but
you can do a lot of stuff with athletes and that's what we plan on
doing."
"We have a couple tall girls, but most of us
are short," DiGravio said. "All of us just know we just have to use our
bodies more to box out and because we don't have those tall girls, it
just means we have to be a little more physical to get those rebounds."
Tuesday's game was the first of the season
for the Celtics as they opted not to play any pre-season matches.
"A lot of teams have gone to early bird
tournaments and they've gotten a sense of what their teams are capable
of," Bremner said.
"We decided that we were just going to take last week
and the week before that to practice and go through offensive sets and
things like that and just kind of work through the bumps as they came."
