TCHS Lions emerge victorious in annual Black and Blue Tournament

Times Photo Submitted.

Submitted by Carolyn Siemens

This past weekend we co-hosted our third annual Black and Blue Tournament with St. Mary’s and Taber Christian High School. The TCHS JV and SV girls Lions, along with their SV boys and the St. Mary’s SV Celtics all competed in the sixteen team tournament. The Championship game for the girls saw the Lions compete against Immanuel Christian School JV and the Lions took the win. On the boys side, both host teams made the championship game and TCHS took the win.

The girls saw their first game against Picture Butte High School. The Lions took the win in their first game playing well both offensively and defensively. In the win Savannah Schmitt led in scoring with 19, Irena Kuypers added 16 and both Iya Hoekstra and Kenndey Planger scored 12. On the boards we had Planger with 12 and Kuypers, Nyla DeBoer, Logan Meier and Hailey Peters all with eight. McKenzie Siemens had seven assists and Schmitt had seven steals in the win.

In the semi-final game the Lions were matched against Medicine Hat McCoy JV team. This was a fast paced game from both teams moving the ball well up and down the court quickly. The girls played some of their best basketball so far this season and took the win 69-32. Hoekstra led scoring with 22 with Katelyn Bennen and Nancy Rempel each adding nine. On the boards we had Rempel with 11, Peters with 10 and Kuypers with nine.

In the Championship game we played Immanuel Christian High School JV team. We played a really good first quarter against ICHS and then we lost some of our control of the game in the last couple quarters. In the fourth quarter ICHS shooters started getting hot and they were able to close the lead we had on them. We were lucky the girls were able to hit some key shots and play some good defense in the end to pull off the win 59-53. Hoekstra led scoring once again with 22 and Kuypers added 13. Kuypers again led on the boards with 17 with Hoekstra and Meier grabbing eight each.

For our five grade twelve athletes this was quite an accomplishment as they have been the Black and Blue Champions for the past three years that we have had the tournament. This week we travelled to Coaldale on Monday to play Prairie Winds Secondary and then to Coalhurst on the weekend for their annual tournament.