A devastating injury has created an irreplaceable hole on the Charles Hays senior girls basketball team.
Grade 12 captain and point guard Tanveen Randhawa was practicing last Thursday for her play day to be taking place this past weekend against the junior squad when she grabbed the ball on a routine play and knew something had gone terribly wrong.
“I caught the ball, went to drive, pushed off my left leg and then I just heard a popping sound and it felt like someone kicked me really hard from behind, so I just turned around and there was no one there,” said Randhawa last Saturday.
“And then I knew it was my achilles [tendon].”
It wasn’t a sight anyone expected to see on Saturday – Randhawa making her way across the court on crutches and in a cast after the first quarter of the senior Rainmakers match versus Caledonia (CAL) at Charles Hays Secondary.
But losing 18-3, and donning their #PLAYFORTAN message on the back of their team shirts, the Rainmakers picked up their game at the sight of their sidelined captain, and made it a two-point game at 24-22. But in the end, the Kermodes were just too much to handle for the home team and the girls fell 58-39 to a strong Caledonia side in their second game of the day.
“We’re just without our point guard and trying to get used to that,” said head coach Sara Barrow.
“We’re just trying to figure out the lines and where they belong. Henzle [Masocol] came in and hasn’t even touched the ball [before today] so she played fairly well for not even doing that and taking it up the court.”
Masocol stepped in for Randhawa and played admirably, but the team will now have to traverse the 2014-15 season without their leader. That’ll be a daunting task, especially with tough competition from Terrace and the surrounding area.
“I had surgery [Friday] morning and then I have my stitches in for two weeks. After that, I’ll get a cast and then six weeks later, I’ll be in physio,” said the captain.
The ‘Makers’ had trouble boxing out in that first quarter that had the squad down 15 points early, but a masterful second quarter led by Morgan Weir, Ashtyn Andreesen, Billie Leeson, Masocol and Tanveen Sahdra had Charles Hays go on a 19-6 run to almost catch up to Caledonia.
But Khali Pelletier, Faith Nisyok and Carly Davies helped the Kermodes escape the Rainmakers’ comeback to go on their own 13-0 run in the fourth quarter to pull away and take the victory for Terrace.
“We threw it away a lot. We just need to clean up our errors and make it not so easy for them to get to the basket,” said Barrow.
“We rushed it. We took about 10 seconds before we put up a shot and they were a lot more patient and they moved the ball around and anytime you move that ball around it’s going to be a lot easier to score when the defence breaks down.”
In their first match on Saturday morning against CAL, the team lost 53-37.
JUNIORS DOMINANT AGAINST CALEDONIA, NISGA’A
Head coach Anna Ashley will have a lot of substitute calls to make this season. She can also produce four full lines at will.
Twenty girls have taken part in Charles Hays’ junior girls basketball program and Ashley was able to play them all in two games on Saturday.
First against Caledonia, the Rainmakers handily defeated their rivals 51-31 and then late in the afternoon, the team downed Team Nisga’a 57-29.
“I was really happy with how they played. We just learned zone offence so considering that, they were doing awesome,” said Ashley.
Brittany Waite, Ruby Mason, Tara Robinson, Marissa Innes, Madison Thomas, Jada Wesley, Brooke Andreesen and Carly Cochrane all found the score sheet in the game against Team Nisga’a.
An early 10-5 lead after the first quarter and great chemistry between Cochrane and Waite produced the 24-11 half-time lead the ‘Makers gained on their opponents.
Mason’s speed and agility had her defenders reeling more often than not and Innes’ two fourth-quarter three-pointers took the game out of reach for Nisga’a.
“Their defence picked up a little bit [from the morning game to the afternoon game] ... they were talking well. I’d like them to talk more but they were talking fairly well and they were moving the ball around. They had some good shooting today so overall I was very happy with how they played,” said Ashley.