Joey Payeur
With her tongue hanging out as she drove the lane, Aliisa Heiskanen evoked memories of Michael Jordan in his prime.
Judging by her ability to fill the net, the Muskie senior girls’ basketball team might have preferred to take its chances on stopping “Air Jordan” instead.
Heiskanen was a scoring machine who led the Hammarskjold Vikings (Thunder Bay) to a two-game sweep of Fort High in the best-of-three NWOSSAA championship here over the weekend.
The Grade 12 sensation netted 24 points in a 45-10 victory in Game 1 on Friday afternoon, then added 19 in a 57-15 decision Saturday morning to help the Vikings punch their ticket to the OFSAA ‘AA’ showdown starting Thursday in Windsor.
“No. 33 [Heiskanen] is a pretty complete player,” Muskie co-coach Dan Bird said about the lanky forward, who never played a minute in the fourth quarter of either game with the Vikings comfortably in front.
“Maisie [Fichuk] and Sarah [Bagacki] did a good job defending her,” he added in defence of his two Muskie seniors who were given the unenviable task of trying to stopped Heiskanen.
“But when you focus on one [player], that’s when one of the other four out there get good [scoring] opportunities and they took advantage of that.”
Fichuk wasn’t hanging her head at what was the end of the line for her, Bagacki, and fellow Muskie seniors Keira Lindgren, Celia Berry, and Kimya Shahi.
“I’m satisfied with what we accomplished this year,” said Fichuk.
“That other team is really good,” she added. “We tried as hard as we could.
“I’m not disappointed at all.”
“We knew from our experience at NWOSSAA last year against St. Ignatius that the Thunder Bay champion was going to be tough,” echoed Bagacki, Fort High’s scoring leader this season who was handcuffed by a ferocious Vikings’ defence that held her to one field goal in Game 1 and only a single free throw in Game 2.
“I was really impressed with how they played us defensively.”
Meanwhile, Cassandra Moffitt, who led the Muskies in scoring both games with four points in Game 1 and seven in Game 2, already has dreams of an NWOSSAA return next season.
“I feel we’ll do good again,” she remarked.
“We all want to go that far one more time.”
