Lucas Punkari
A week after falling to the Rainy River Owls in the final of their own tournament at Fort High, the Muskie junior girls’ basketball team reached the top of the mountain Saturday night in Thunder Bay.
Competing against the host Westgate Tigers in the championship game, the black-and-gold earned a 31-21 victory to claim the tourney title thanks to a 12-point game by Hannah McLeod and a seven-point outing from Cassandra Moffitt.
“In the last game, we started off a little slow,” noted co-head coach Alyssa Holliday. “But after that, the girls just got rolling.
“The girls were getting those rebounds, they played strong on defence, and they really started to show what they can do out there,” she added.
The Muskies, one of eight teams competing in the tournament, advanced to the final thanks to wins over the Superior Gryphons and St. Ignatius Falcons on Friday and Saturday.
“Everyone was executing against Superior and the girls were getting a lot more rebounds than they did in their last few games, so we were very happy to see that,” Holliday recalled.
“We knew that we were going against one of the tougher teams in Thunder Bay [in] St. Ignatius, so our main focus was to execute our plays, which is what they did.”
The tourney win came on the heels of the Muskies’ 40-19 romp over the Dryden Eagles in NorWOSSA action here last Thursday afternoon.
The main difference in that game was a 17-0 second-quarter run, which blew open a 4-4 tie after the opening quarter.
“We were pretty happy about that one on the bench,” co-head coach Mike Krueger enthused after the game.
“It was a total team effort out there that saw everybody contributing, which was great to see.
“I would still like to see them work the offence a little bit more as it got hectic out there for a while, but it was a good victory,” he added.
McLeod led the second-quarter assault with eight points, and finished with a game-high 17.
With Thursday’s win, the juniors improved to 4-1 in NorWOSSA play heading into yesterday’s showdown in Kenora as they try to repeat as league champs.
“This team is a little bit different than what we had last year,” noted Grade 10 guard Sierra Cousineau.
“We have a different mix of girls here than what we had on the team last year, and there’s things that we did better last year that we still need to work on,” she explained.
“But there are some that we do better this year compared to last year.”
