The Kenaston Kodiaks senior girls basketball team are 1A provincial champions.
The girls won both their games at HOOPLA March 22 and 23, beating the Lake Lenore Lancers 61-60 in the first match held at St. Joseph High School in Saskatoon before taking home the gold with a decisive 51-38 win over the Middle Lake Three Lakes School Avengers at Evan Hardy Collegiate a day later. This is the first provincial title for the Kodiaks since 1999.
Gene Zdunich, head coach of the Kodiaks, said the girls played great in the final game against the Avengers and deserved the win, but they have to credit a few outstanding individual performances in the dying seconds of their game against the Lancers to get them to that gold medal game.
“It was a tense game right from start to finish,” said Zdunich about their 61-60 win over the Lancers. “It was real close. There were quite a few lead changes and we were four points down with about a minute left and (point guard) Eve Ulmer hit a three. Then somebody travelled on Lake Lenore and Eve took the ball to the basket and hit both of her foul shots with about 17 seconds left. They called a timeout and advanced the ball and (centre) Maria Matovich blocked a shot just on the edge of the key with time running out and we won by one.”
Kenaston’s only Grade 12 player, forward Shae-Lynn Evans, lead all Kodiaks’ scorers with 17 points against the Lancers. Against the Avengers, Maria stepped up with 20 points to lead all Kenaston scorers.
“We played pretty well against Middle Lake,” he said. “We controlled their players that we knew we needed to control and scored when we had to. We had the lead throughout. They took a run at us a couple of times, but they never got the lead.”
Zdunich said the team never had any expectations of being so successful this year, but their goal was to make it to HOOPLA and win at least one game. He said the season as a whole was “pretty successful” for the girls and even more especially so given the age and number of players on the senior club.
“It was an exciting season,” he said. “We didn’t play very much because we only have eight players, three of which are in Grade 8. We only played 23 games before playoffs just to try and keep our players fresh and avoid injuries and sickness from getting run down too much.”
The coach said he’s not predicting a dynasty starting up for the Kodiaks considering seven of those players will be back on the court next year, but he is hopeful for continued success.