Great finish to a great season

It had been an exhaustingly long two weeks.
Two weeks had passed since the Muskie senior girls’ basketball team last played and it seemed like an eternity. All the waiting, all the anxiety—they couldn’t wait to unleash it all.
And when the best-of-three NWOSSAA final finally arrived here Friday afternoon, the Muskies were nervous. But they also were zealous—and they were ready.
•Game 1—Friday (2:15 p.m.)
The self-dubbed “Fish Tank” was filled to capacity and the noise echoed as the Muskies warmed up.
On the opposite end of the court was the Fort William Collegiate Institute Blue Bears of Thunder Bay—a balanced team that had upset the heavily-favoured Churchill Trojans to advance to NWOSSAA.
The game had been two months in the making and Muskie head coach Mike Busch emphasized one key aspect before the team took to the court.
“Have fun,” he remarked. “Just have fun. Go out there and relax, and have fun.”
The game began intensely, but the Blue Bears had played earlier that week and took advantage of that while the Muskies were in need of an Armor All finish to get rid of the rust.
Still, with the crowd loving it, the black-and-gold climbed back from an early six-point deficit and tied the score at 8-8 after the first quarter.
The Muskie faithful hooted, they hollered, they screamed, and were a big reason why the Blue Bears shot abysmally from the free-throw line.
“Sometimes it was a little harder for me to talk to them, but it’s sure great to have that home crowd,” said Busch.
But the Muskies fell like the U.S. dollar in the second quarter as the Blue Bears took advantage of calculated offensive sets to grab a 10-point lead (24-14) heading into the third quarter.
It was here when Carley McCormick and Rebecca Cornell decided to add their footprint to the game—helping lead a Muskie run that saw them cut the deficit to five points at the buzzer.
Unfortunately, the final eight minutes encapsulated what the Muskies had shown all season—a solid defence but anemic offence. And in the end, the Blue Bears came away with a 37-32 victory.
Still, FWCI looked sporadic at times and the Muskies knew they had a chance.
“We know that we didn’t execute as well as we should’ve on offence, but [the Blue Bears] got rattled when we started making a comeback,” Busch noted afterwards.
“So if we can keep that momentum going, and either keep the lead or push them close, they can be rattled,” he added.
•Game 2—Saturday (10 a.m.)
After a night of thinking (an athlete’s worst trait), an early wake-up call roused the Muskies for their do-or-die game.
Due to Friday’s loss, the Muskies had to beat the Blue Bears on Saturday morning to force a third-and-deciding game that afternoon. And the home side was all too aware of it.
“I think we were all still a little nervous. We knew that if we lost, then we were done,” said Ashley Whalen.
But the black-and-gold came out blazing as Whalen scored on their first possession, then tallied again on the next play after causing a turnover leading to a fast break.
The Muskies committed no fouls in the quarter, which saw them take an 8-5 lead going into the second—and they didn’t let up there.
Just when the Blue Bears began clawing back, the Muskies started playing their form of vintage basketball, which features players with a full range of qualities—speed, daring, unselfishness, creativity, and intensity.
They began to dominate on the defensive end, which set up their offensive play to give them a 21-17 lead at halftime.
“Everyone had something to do with our effort,” said Cornell.
The third quarter began with three unanswered baskets by the Blue Bears, and the score was knotted for the most of the quarter at 23-23.
The brutality of the match began playing out largely underneath the boards, where the grabbing, clawing, and general mayhem that took place made the “WWE Smackdown” look genteel.
But Laura Busch shone as the key player in the quarter as she grabbed rebounds, played shot-adjusting defence, and scored with a minute left in the quarter to give the Muskies a 25-23 lead.
“We came out fired up today and it showed in our game,” said coach Busch. “We knew that we were as good as they were.”
Two distinctively different offences were seen on the court. The Blue Bears implement little movement and long passes, which forces a defence to shift over to leave them sometimes vulnerable.
The Muskies, meanwhile, prefer a more calculated offence where screens, lots of movement, and short passes are seen.
Both styles worked and like a pendulum, the fourth quarter went back and forth with neither team able to gain a distinct advantage until the Blue Bears amassed a three-point lead with less than 10 seconds to play.
Things looked bleak. They looked unbearable. Almost hopeless.
But then a funny thing happened. McCormick, who usually plays down low on the wing, called for the ball close to the three-point line at the top of the key and released.
She had practised this shot with mind-numbing repetitiveness—for hours, days, weeks, and years—so that each motion, every release of the ball, became an act of muscle memory.
And as she let the ball go, all went silent as it began to rotate towards the basket. Slow motion kicked in. The arc looked good, the distance was blameless, the line was right, and . . . nothing but net.
What once seemed bleak now looked open. What once looked unbearable was now welcome. What once felt hopeless now felt opportunistic.
Could the Muskies pull it out and force a Game 3? Or would they head home earlier than planned? Overtime was now upon us. The pressure was on.
“Both teams were on pins and needles the entire time, and it had to have been tough for those girls looking at that score clock and never seeing a lead get very big, and knowing the pressure was on them every time they touched the ball,” said Busch.
The Blue Bears’ best player, Shannon Vellinga, had fouled out and the Muskies were looking to capitalize on her absence.
But it was their point guard, Amy Aldriel, who stepped in and played the part of judge, jury, and executioner as she drained key foul shots to eventually seal the 42-35 win and subsequently end the Muskies’ season.
“This was really fun,” Whalen said afterwards. “I had so much fun just playing as a team.”
Whalen, along with Laura Busch, Cornell, McCormick, Taylor Harnett, and Megan Soderholm, all had played their last game in a Muskie basketball uniform.
And the scene after the final buzzer was emotional as it began to sink in for those players who weren’t returning—and even by those that were.
“It’s pretty rough,” sighed Whalen as she unsuccessfully tried to hold back tears. “It’s like a family outside of your family so once that’s done, it’s like, ‘What do I do? I don’t have anything else to do,’ so it’s going to be hard.
“I’ll always remember this team. The trips, the hard times and getting past them, and making everything better,” she added. “It was a great team.”
A great team, indeed.