St. Mary School’s senior boys came out on top at the Swan Hills Halloween Howler tournament Oct. 28-29.
The boys won the best out of three in matches against Onoway and Swan Hills and won two straight in matches against Kinuso and Slave Lake’s St. Francis of Assisi.
“It was kind of a different way of playing it out,” said head coach Vance Nakonechny. “They didn’t actually have a playoff round. They had some teams drop out and had to change the draw. What they wound up doing was everybody played each other once and who ever had the best record won the banner.”
The highlight of the weekend was the match against Onoway, Nakonechny said, which was the first time the teams have battled.
“It was a very competitive match, very intense and the boys played well,” he said.
“Looking at the teams that were there, that would have been our toughest test. It’s a little different to play your best match or your toughest team on Friday night instead of in the final. Just the way the draw worked, we figured they’d be the team to beat.”
From that match, the team was able to build their confidence and carry it through the tournament.
“We are able to get all of our players to see action, so it was good for some of our younger players to see some adversity on the court and thrive,” he said. “They all performed very well.”
The Sharks will head to Thorhild Nov. 4 and 5 for another tournament.
“We’ve played (Thorhild) in our tournament and we split with them — they won one and we won one — so we’re very evenly matched. We’ll see a lot of the teams from our zone, some of them we’ve played already. It’ll be step up in competition compared to this weekend.”
