St. Mary’s girls basketball team up with Taber Christian Lions

Submitted by Carolyn Siemens

For the past few years the Taber Christian senior high girls have joined the St. Mary’s basketball team to compete, and this year the St. Mary’s girls have joined the Taber Christian Lions to form a combined team for the season.  

The team is coached by Kelsi Gilbert, Brenda Kuypers and Jaydee DeBoer. The girls will compete in the Deep South League and compete in tournaments throughout the season.

The Lions had their home opener this past Wednesday against Stirling High School. As a first game and new teammates playing together we were not sure what to expect, but the girls came to play and took the win against Stirling in an exciting 51-46 win.

The beginning of the game we started out a bit slow on offence and found ourselves behind 5-12. Heading into the second quarter we were able to get some flow in the game and picked up our offence and defence but still found ourselves down at half 16-24. As the second half progressed we started finding more success on both ends of the court and out scored them in the third quarter. Our final quarter was definitely the best quarter of the night where we were able to out score them 20-10 and secure the win for the night.

Iya Hoekstra went on a great run for us in the last five minutes of the game and ended the night with 21 points followed by Irena Kuypers with 10 and Logan Meier adding eight. Kuypers led on the boards for us with 14 rebounds, Hoekstra grabbing 10 and Meier with seven. Defensively we had five steals from Meier and McKenzie Siemens and Kuypers dominated with five blocks.

We are really excited about the season with the team moving forward. They hit the road on Monday to play Coaldale Christian in league play and will then play in the Prairie Winds Winter Festival tournament starting on Thursday with a game against Fernie and McCoy on Friday.