Article By: Mark Bryson
CAMBRIDGE — Natalie Armatage felt the weight that goes along with increased expectations.
The KCI Raiders captured their second
straight Waterloo County junior girls' high school basketball
championship Tuesday night — this time as overwhelming favourites — with
a 45-26 win over the Galt Ghosts.
The Raiders defeated the Waterloo-Oxford
Crusaders last year as decided underdogs and Armatage said the most
recent win felt very different because of that.
"I felt a bit more pressure coming into this
game, to be honest. Last year, we had nothing to lose, so we just went
out, played hard and won," she said. "This year, we had more weight on
our shoulders coming in as the No. 1 seed. But we handled it well."
Indeed, they did.
Armatage led the way with a game-high 16
points, as the Raiders jumped out to a 19-4 lead at Preston High School.
They only briefly had to look into the rear-view mirror when the Ghosts
narrowed the gap to eight points, 30-22, at the midway point of the
third quarter.
Mikaela White added 14 points for the
Raiders, Emily Smith and Grace Mickie both added seven.
Maggie McLean
had a strong defensive game.
Charlie Ridge had eight points for Galt and Azaliah Colquhoun had six.
The Raiders finished the WCSSAA portion of
their season with a 15-0 record, including a 48-20 win over the Ghosts
during the regular season. Galt finished at 13-2, with both losses
coming to KCI.
Both teams advance to Central Western
Ontario tournaments later this week. KCI moves on to CWOSSA triple-A
tournament in Waterloo, along with St. Benedict, Sir John A. Macdonald,
Brantford Collegiate, Orangeville District, and either Waterloo-Oxford
or Owen Sound.
"Hopefully we can medal this year," said
Armatage. "We came up short in the semifinals last year, so we'll try to
change that."
Galt advances to the CWOSSA double-A championship in Paris and Brantford.
Later in the evening, the Waterloo-Oxford
cruised to their first WCSSAA senior title since 2013, with a 49-33 win
over the Jacob Hespeler Hawks.
Rachael Beitz, MacKeely Shantz and Madeline
Woolvett led the Crusaders with 15, 12 and 10 points respectively, in
front of a boisterous pro-Hawks crowd.
The Crusaders led 16-3 after the first quarter, 27-11 at halftime, and 37-23 after three quarters.
Charlotte Clifford scored 16 for Jacob Hespeler, Amy Claydon had seven and Carlie Riggan had six.
Jacob Hespeler (13-2) handed Waterloo-Oxford
(14-1) its only loss of the season, a 43-37 decision on Oct. 27.
Both teams advance to the CWOSSA triple-A
tournament, along with the District 8 champion Resurrection Phoenix,
Guelph Collegiate, Brantford St. John's, and Waterloo Collegiate.
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