The Davidson Raiders, Craik Cougars and Kenaston Kodiaks junior badminton teams are gearing up for sectionals and inter-sectionals this week after a whirlwind season of fun and determined play.

Allison de Hoop, coach of the Kodiaks junior badminton team, said her goal is for the team to play hard and improve their skills at inter-sectionals April 10 in Loreburn while continuing to display good sportsmanship. She said the games the 13-member team has played so far this year, including a mini-tournament last Monday in Davidson between the three schools, were just for practice and no score was taken, but that is going to change this Thursday.

de Hoop said the games the Kodiaks boys and girls singles, doubles and mixed doubles teams would be playing at inter-sectionals will be marked, with the winner moving on to sectionals April 15 at Kenaston. The winners from those games move on to districts held early next month, but de Hoop said just getting better at the game right now is more important than the final score.

“I like badminton because you have to think about it when you’re playing and you’ve got to think about how your opponent is playing, so it gets the mind and body working together,” said de Hoop. “If they’re playing doubles they are also playing with a teammate, so they are learning how to cooperate with that other person and (figure out) when it is their turn to hit and when it is the other person’s turn. They are learning some good cooperation skills and how to be a good sport.”

Jody Kearns, coach of the Cougars bantam badminton team, said Craik’s playoff schedule is different from Kenaston and Davidson because they are in the Prairie South School Division, so her team will actually be competing in sectionals this Thursday at Caronport. She said the team of 14 kids has had a busy year up to this date practising against “some good competition” in an effort to build up their skills.

“We’re a young team,” said Kearns, noting most of the kids heading to Caronport are in either Grade 7 or 8. “It’s not necessarily about winning and losing. It’ll be the first time for some Grade 7s going to a big tournament. This is just to gain experience.”

Raiders coach Kristin Dolman said the 18 kids on the Davidson team have gotten together with a few different schools in their short season as a way to get kids practising the sport in a game situation.

“It’s a really good sport for someone who likes to play (individually, as) it allows them to excel and not rely on anyone else,” said Dolman. “It involves a lot of coordination and it actually can turn out to be a really fast-paced intense game.”

The Kenaston Kodiaks senior girls basketball team was defeated in the gold medal game at Hoopla earlier this month, but they still can say they enjoyed a great season.

“We as a team talk about it a lot that we won’t base our feelings on whether we’ve had a successful year or not on our last game,” said Kodiaks coach Gene Zdunich. “We beat all the top 3A teams and both of the top 2A teams and we know we had a successful year.”

The Kodiaks lost the last game 57-52 to the Middle Lake Avengers March 15 at Winston Knoll Collegiate in Regina. The Middle Lake win avenged their 51-38 loss to Kenaston in the gold medal game at Hoopla one year ago.

Zdunich said between those two gold medal finals the two teams have played against each other five times with the Kodiaks winning three of those games. He said other than one game where the Avengers were short players and Kenaston trounced them by over 20 points, each of the matches were really close.

“The other games were all decided by five or six or seven points, so when they’re that close against a team that is as good as them and (between) two teams that are as competitive as we are it can go either way,” he said. “We knew that too. It wasn’t a complete surprise that if we didn’t play well they would win.”

Kenaston came out slow in the gold medal final and fell behind Middle Lake heading into the half. A third quarter surge pulled the Kodiaks ahead briefly, but a lack of scoring touch sealed their fate as the Avengers once again took the lead and held on for the five-point win.

“We just never finished as good as we can,” said Zdunich. “I don’t think there was any real turning point. They were just a good team and we needed to play a little better. We knew that if we didn’t play our best we were going to be in trouble and we didn’t play our best.”

The young Kodiaks team, which includes one Grade 12, three Grade 11s, three Grade 9s and four Grade 8s, made it to the gold medal game with a 72-60 win over the Kinistino Blues one day earlier at Hoopla. The hard-working club advanced to the provincial championships by beating the Turtleford Titans 90-26 and the Wilkie Broncs 67-43 one week earlier at regional playoffs held in Kenaston, which followed a 85-23 win over the Central Butte Bulldogs March 1 at the conference playoffs in Central Butte.

Zdunich said with so many returning players he expects the Kodiaks to be strong again next season. He said they hopefully will get another shot at the gold medal, but the aim is to just get better at the game and enjoy their time on the court.

“If we improve every week during the season we feel like we’re successful,” he said. “Our number one goal is our girls have got to have fun. We try and make sure they’re smiling.”

The Davidson Cyclones senior hockey team lost Game 3 of the provincial ‘A’ semifinal 6-3 last Monday at home to the Lanigan Pirates marking the first time in five years the team would not finish the season with a provincial title.

“We definitely played hard,” said Cyclones goaltender Mark Zoerb, who picked up the Game 2 win in Lanigan two days earlier to bring the series back to Davidson for the deciding game in the best-of-three semifinal. “It was a good series. They are a really good hockey team. It’s no shame losing out in the semifinals in ‘A’ provincials. There are a lot of good hockey players there.”

Zoerb said the Pirates clutch shooting in the third period when they snuck in four goals in the frame to the Cyclone’s one was Davidson’s downfall and that’s the way it seemed to go the whole series. He said the Cyclones were feeling good heading into the third with the game tied 2-2, but eventually a good team like the Pirates is going to get their chances.

“I know the goal that we scored and then got called off (on a shot from Kyle Bortis with 3:18 remaining in the second and the score tied at twos) definitely didn’t help any, but we still played strong after that,” he said. “It was just overall, they came back and scored a couple goals.”

Jason Shaw, coach of the Cyclones, said Lanigan “won the third period” in every game in the series and that proved to be the difference. He said everybody on his team gave it their all on the ice during the last two games of the series, but the breaks didn’t seem to go their way.

“We were up 3-2 in the third (courtesy of a Pat Cey tip 4:14 into the frame) and we couldn’t finish them off,” said Shaw. “They’re a good team. They finished first in our league and they’re in the league finals. It was disappointing to lose. Really we were disappointed after Game 1 (with) the way we played. Game 2 and Game 3 we didn’t play to our utmost potential, but the effort was there and it just didn’t work out.”

Shaw said the team played with a short bench “pretty much all year,” but the players that did come out worked hard. He said the Cyclones got the most out of what they had and should be proud of their season despite not winning a title.

To read more please see the March 24 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

A young triathlete from Dundurn is prepping for a busy racing season this summer where she hopes to improve on her previous strong showings.

Kaycee Schroeder, 15, said her seventh year of competing in triathlons is going to be a fun one as she first tries for a top finish at the 2014 National Championships held July 19 to 20 at Magog, Que., before heading to Kelowna, B.C., this August for the 2014 Pushor Mitchell Apple Triathlon Western Championships. She said to help prepare for the season she is also going to be attending a 12-day training camp in Tucson, Ariz., next month.

“Last year I had a great season and have been building a lot,” said Kaycee, a Grade 9 student at Hanley School. “I wasn’t the strongest swimmer, so I finished all my swimming lessons and joined a swim group at the University (of Saskatchewan) and I joined STC which is the Saskatchewan Triathlon Centre in Saskatoon. My coach RossAnn (Edwards) approached me this year and said she’d like me to be coming to more races out of the province and coming to Arizona.”

To help Kaycee make it to the two out-of-province races and the training camp at Tucson the community of Dundurn stepped up by coming together for a steak supper and silent auction fund-raiser Feb. 22 at Big Mur’s Tavern. Kaycee said their generosity helped her family raise over $2,000, so she won’t be having any problems heading to these events and has kept busy this winter getting ready.

“I’m swimming three days a week right now,” she said about how she prepares for the average 500-metre swim, 10-kilometre bike and four-kilometre run youth races. “I bike twice and I run three to four days. I also do strength training at home too.”

Kaycee said she first got into triathlon after spotting a sign advertised the sport at swimming lessons and thought it could be fun. She said her mom and dad thought it would be a good idea too, so she started training.

“I did my first one and I really enjoyed it,” said Kaycee. “I was dead last out of the pool, but I still had an amazing race. Then I just kind of kept with it and started doing it for a fun summer activity and as I started to get older and more competitive with the sport I had more people approach me about it. I started running with Riversdale (Athletics Club in Saskatoon) and RossAnn is the coach of the Riversdale track and cross country club, so then I started swimming and biking with that group.”

Kaycee’s dedication and excellence to the sport since then has shown through as the triathlete has qualified for provincial funding this year to help her train after reaching high performance times in both swimming and running recently. She also approaches this year with a desire to improve on her bronze medal finish in the Under 16 Female event at the 2013 Western Championships held last August at Kelowna where she completed a 500-m swim, 10-km bike and four-km run with a time of 43:43.

“This year I’m one of the oldest in my age category, so I’m hoping to do very well,” she said. “My training has been great, (so) top three for every race I’m hoping.”

The Davidson Cyclones senior hockey team may have met their match in the provincial ‘A’ semi-finals after falling 6-3 to the Lanigan Pirates last Monday at the Davidson Rink.

The loss was Davidson’s fourth straight to Lanigan including a three-game sweep by the Pirates over the Cyclones in Long Lake Hockey League playoff action earlier this month. Game 2 of the provincial ‘A’ semi-final goes March 15 at Lanigan, while a possible Game 3 in the best-of-three series would come back to Davidson on St. Patrick’s Day.

“It wasn’t the outcome we wanted,” said Cyclones coach Jason Shaw. “The first period we started slow. They got up 2-1 and then they scored in the second to make it 3-1. We had a couple power plays that would have been nice to score on to get back. When we battled back in the third to get it to 4-3 I thought we had a chance.”

That chance was snuffed out on a Pirates goal 17 seconds later when Lanigan’s Brandon Herrod seemed to surprise Cyclones goaltender Brady Willner and the two defencemen in front of him with a shot that found its way into the back of the net shortly after a Lanigan offensive zone face off.

“It was just one of those goals we’d like to have back,” said Shaw. “We had some chances where we hit some crossbars and stuff like that, but it seemed like we would score and they would score right away again. They played well and I don’t think we played our best game. When you get into the playoffs you got to have everything going to win and that night just wasn’t our night.”

Shaw said one of the problems the Cyclones faced in the game was getting off to the slow start which forced their offence to be more aggressive early on resulting in a weak back end. He said they were sending three guys to the net to try and create chances, so when their defence also joined the rush it gave the Pirates lots of chances for breakaway opportunities.

“It’s just a couple mistakes here and there,” he said. “Brady played well. He stopped most of those, so if we (don’t) keep a third guy high in their end that might take away a few of those chances, but we’re pushing to score goals when we get down (then) you create more chances for them.”

The Cyclones plan going into Game 2 is to get to the net more and try to get a few more rebound goals on Pirates starting goalie David Reekie who has played well in Lanigan’s run through this post season. Shaw said the team is just going to put a lot of pucks at the Lanigan net and then let come what may.

“We’re down to our last chance,” he said. We “go there, see if we can squeak one out, and come back here Monday and see how it goes.”

The Kenaston Kodiaks junior boys basketball team are the 2014 Sun West district champions after putting together two convincing wins over the Davidson Raiders and Biggar Blazers at districts last Wednesday at Davidson School.

The Kodiaks held off a determined Blazers team in the fourth quarter to come out with a 51-42 win in the gold medal game to take home the championship. The Blazers trailed 49-22 heading into the final 10 minutes, but controlled the game in the fourth.

“It was a really close game,” said Kodiaks coach John Jamieson. “We had a really short bench and Biggar had (20) points in the fourth quarter. They played four quarters hard and tired us down. It was an impressive game for them.”

The Kodiaks championship win followed a close 65-54 victory over the Raiders that saw Davidson also stage a fourth quarter comeback only to fall a few points short. The Raiders put up 19 points in the last six minutes of the fourth quarter to give Kenaston a scare.

“That was our toughest match-up,” said Kodiaks co-coach Dan Marsh about the Raiders game. “It was a grudge match because they beat us in the sectional final, so our boys wanted a little bit of redemption. It came right down to the wire. They pressured us like we knew they would and we came out on top in the end.”

Davidson would finish in third place at districts beating the Kindersley Kobras 55-43 in the consolation match. The score doesn’t do the Kobras justice as the game was back and fourth throughout the first three quarters with the score tied at 20-20 at the half and Davidson only up by six entering the final frame.

Raiders coach Blair Frederickson said the main priority for him was getting all his kids onto the court in their last game of the season and he is “happy” that is what happened no matter the final score. He said some players on his team are more advanced in basketball and some are beginners, so having a game where everyone gets an opportunity to play is the best situation.

“From a coach’s or a teacher’s perspective that is great because it gives the kids something positive at the end of the season, so I can get these kids to come back out next year and keep building the program,” said Frederickson, noting in their first game against Kenaston he shortened the bench to try and get the win. “Having that second game was a great opportunity for me to get some of my younger kids and some of my kids who haven’t played that much basketball on the floor and (gain) some game experience.”

To read more please see the March 10 print edition of The Davidson Leader.