The Prince Rupert Middle School Storm Grade 8 boys basketball team won third place at a season-end regional tournament held in Prince George, Feb. 25 to 26.
The team beat out event host DP Todd Secondary 50-29 in the bronze medal match at the Northern Junior B Year-End tournament.
“I was really impressed with how they carried themselves and how they responded to adversity. It was an [extremely] solid weekend,” Kevin Sawka, team coach, told The Northern View.
The Grade 8 boys team, consisting of some Grade 7 members, was invited to participate in the junior-level event. The tournament hosted teams of Grade 9 and some Grade 10 students.
The Storm went into the year-end tournament after an undefeated season that included winning the BC Northwest Zone Championship.
Though they faced older and more experienced opposition, the Storm won three matches, including one exhibition game.
In their pre-tournament match, on Feb. 24, the Storm won 54-43 against Prince George Secondary’s junior team.
Neck-in-neck throughout the first half of the match, the Prince Rupert boys pulled out in front in the latter half of the game to go into their tournament campaign with another win.
The next day, the Storm faced off against Duchess Park Secondary School’s junior side and beat them 70-50.
“Seventy points is a lot of points for any team to put up. Even at the junior level, 70 points is getting up there, but for Grade 8, putting up 70 points is pretty awesome,” Sawka said.
Tyson Bomben, an accompanying Grade 9 player from the high school Rainmakers team, netted 26 points.
“He played with his hair on fire,” Sawka said, adding Bomben successfully stepped into a leadership role during the trip with his future Charles Hays Secondary School Rainmakers teammates.
The convincing win put the Storm through to the semi-finals, where the team ran out of momentum and lost 65-36 to eventual tournament winners Quesnel Junior School.
“The energy level wasn’t there, the execution wasn’t there [and] everybody just didn’t seem to be on the same page the way they were in the previous game,” Sawka said.
The game followed their previous match that ended around 9 p.m. the night before. The semi-final was held the morning after at 9:30 a.m. and the boys just weren’t as sharp as they needed to be, the coach said.
It was interesting to see how the team would respond and manage their competitive disciplinary skills on the road, the coach said adding some of the boys managed to hit the sack early while others did not.
Though having lost, the Storm went on to win the third-place match versus DP Todd later that same day.
“That was another convincing win. The energy level was way higher,” Sawka said.
The two parents on the trip were blown away by their performance after their loss earlier that day, Sawka said. If they had performed even half as well as they did in the third-place match they could have won the semi-final.
The weekend trip not only proved to be a valuable competitive experience for the young boys but also served as an important lesson into becoming more independent as well as learning how to manage their time and money, Sawka said.
“They did well. They experienced positives and they experienced some tough losses and lessons there too,” he said. “Honestly, I just think the future is really bright with this group moving forward.”
READ MORE: Prince Rupert Storm win BC Northwest Zone Championship
READ MORE: Grade 8 basketball team head into Zone Championship undefeated
Norman Galimski | Journalist
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