U10 Season Recap
When the U10 Girls started this season, the plan was to get together once a week at Harry J Clarke and work on developing their skills and learning the rules of basketball. They were not even going to register as a competitive team; they would just have some friendly scrimmages with the County Clippers, with parents as refs.
On October 29th the girls had their first ever scrimmages with the Peterborough Power and the County Clippers. They lost the first game to Peterborough, and came out with a victory against the Clippers. After that weekend the girls and their parents caught the basketball fever and decided they wanted to have a chance to play more teams, with actual refs. They registered as a competitive team with OBA shortly after.
The girls went on to play the Clippers multiple times, splitting the season series 4-4, and had a couple more games against the Power that were always close losses, and they lost by a very large margin to the Scarborough Blues.
With only ever beating the Clippers, there were modest expectations of how the girls would do during the 8 team East Meets West tournament they hosted for the end of their season. They did however have more experience than before and added a strong player in Mila Kaliaiev who had finished her season with the U12 girls.
In their first game they lost by 1 point against the Peterborough Power. After shaking off the rust of their first game, they came out firing, scoring their highest season point total of 34 points, while only giving up 7 to the Kanata Cavaliers. To make it to the playoff round they had to now beat the Scarborough Blues who had crushed them earlier in the year, but the girls were up for the challenge! They came out firing again, putting themselves up 8-2 in the first shift. From there it was a battle all game, but they ended up holding the Blues off and winning by 5 to clinch 1st place in their pool!
In the semi-finals against a tough Nepean Blue Devils team, the ball was not dropping like the day before, but the girls team defense continued to be the catalyst for their success, as they won the lowest scoring game of the tournament, 13 – 9. In the finals, they were up against that same Scarborough Blues team once again. It was a back and forth battle, and going into the final shift the game was 13-12 for the Spirits. The last shift went on and scored 6 points while giving up none, and the girls finished their tournament and their season as champions!
These girls showed up to every practice eager and ready to learn from the very beginning. Most of them could not even get the ball in on an eight foot net when the year started, but they persevered and got better because of it. This same growth was evident as well from their first game to their last!
– Coach Michell
