Their dominating performance at the Fraser Valley championship tournament has been all but forgotten by the Holy Cross Crusaders.
The Senior AA girls high school basketball team still hasn’t achieved its goal, which is winning the banner at the B.C. Championship tournament next week in Kamloops.
“Really, that’s all they’ve been talking about since the start of the season,” said Holy Cross head coach Steve Beauchamp. “Placing third at the provincials last year, after losing to Lambrick Park in the semifinal, was a bit of a disappointment to them.”
The Crusaders will take the number-one ranking among Senior AA teams in B.C. to Kamloops, and lived up to that ranking last weekend in Langley.
No team could come to within 40 points of Holy Cross at the Fraser Valley championship, which determined a champion and qualified three teams for the provincials.
They had no trouble defeating the Surrey Christian Falcons 77-25 in the quarterfinal round, then stopped the Archbishop Carney Stars 84-33 in the semifinal round.
They then overcame some early foul trouble to overwhelm the Southridge Storm in Saturday’s final, claiming a third straight Fraser Valley championship banner with a 79-37 victory.
“It was a good test, because we had to play some kids off the bench,” said Beauchamp. “And we don’t lose a lot when to go the to bench. At the B.C. tournament, you can get into foul trouble.”
Michelle Bos topped all scorers in the championship game, netting 21 points while grabbing 14 rebounds on her way to earning the tournament’s Most Valuable Player award.
Rachel Beauchamp scored 16 points and had eight rebounds, while Nicole Vanderhelm contributed with 15 points. Beauchamp and Vanderhelm were first-team all-stars.
