CANMORE – Stella Geestman scored a game-high 16 points and the Banff Bears defeated the Canmore Wolverines 47-31 in the consolation final of the Rocky Mountain Classic in Canmore.
Bears’ Maya Daniel scored 13 points and Grace Gibson chipped in with 10.
The Bears led the battle of mountain towns from buzzer-to-buzzer when the local senior girls’ basketball teams tipped-off Saturday (Feb. 3) at Canmore Collegiate High School, despite the injury bug taking a chomp out of Banff’s lineup.
“In the last two games, we really pulled it together and were able to manage our stamina,” said Grade 10 guard Geestman, who logged major minutes Saturday. “The first game was tough because we weren’t adjusted to playing with such [few] subs.”
All four local teams – the Bears, Wolverines, JV Wolverines and Our Lady of the Snows Avalanche – lost their first games of the tourney, knocking them out of the championship bracket and over to the consolation.
The Bears clawed through the OLS Avalanche and the big Wolverines beat the little Wolverines to set up the consolation finals match-up.
With only seven players available, the Bears utilized its game plan and played smart to lock down their local rivals, letting the clock wind down when they weren’t running the court on the fast break.
Leading the way offensively, Geestman’s hands were also busy on defence, with deflections and steals that disrupted the Wolverines.
The frosty weather hitting the Bow Valley last weekend wasn’t nearly as cold as the Wolverines start of the game – scoring four points in the first quarter – putting them in a hole for the entire 40 minutes.
Sloane Donnelly dropped nearly half of the Wolverines’ 31 points, with a team-high 15 against the Bears.
The Grade 12 forward said the team’s defence didn’t show up for three quarters and their shots weren’t falling like they normally do.
The local schools, with a sibling-like rivalry, have gotten the best of each other at their home tournaments in the past 12 months. On the short end of things this time, the Wolverines want to beat Banff at their tournament in March.
“Of course – but we love Banff,” said Donnelly. “They are our rivals but it’s a very friendly rivalry. We love them and you can probably tell when we play them that we’re all really close.”
BIG HOPES AT ZONES
The Bears are expected to be healthy for the 2A zones tournament in mid-March, which bodes well for a team with “pretty high” goals of making noise at the big event.
“For zones, we have been striving since last year to try and get the banner,” said Geestman.
“Last [year], sadly, a bunch of our players got hurt in the first game [of zones] against [the] Holy Cross [Hawks], and we’re definitely striving to get the banner this year and hopefully we’ll get there.”
The Bears hoped to size up some potential zones competition at the Rocky Mountain Classic against long-time school rival the Webber Academy Wildcats.
But with a short bench, the Wildcats feasted on the limping Bears with a 49-34 victory in the first game of the tournament.
“Our goals are pretty high [at zones], but we have to be healthy,” said Bears head coach Marc Geestman. “We can only really compete with the top teams if we’re healthy. We have to be healthy. That’s the main thing right now.”
The Wolverines took on the Highwood Mustangs in their first game, which could potentially be a 3A zones play-in opponent. The local team lost 62-32.
“We wanted to have a good chance of having a home play-in game for zones, but unfortunately we lost so we might have to go visit them for the play-in game,” said Donnelly.
The Wolverines have progressed in team play since the beginning of the season, but with a particularly tough 3A zones bracket – six teams are ranked in the top-15 in Alberta and the Wolverines aren’t one of them – they have a goal of qualifying and doing the best they can.
“Just to get into the eight-team zone tournament would be a pretty significant accomplishment for us because we’re going to be down at the bottom of that in terms of our zone,” said Wolverines coach Darren Anderson.
In a warm-up for zones, the Banff senior girls’ home tournament takes place March 2-3 at Banff Community High School.
