Feature Article January 29, 2003
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Basketball in Sydenhamby Jeff GreenThe first annual Loughborough Public School Invitational Basketball tournament for Intermediate Students went off in fine style last weekend. From Friday evening until late Saturday afternoon, games were played at the Loughborough PS gym and at the two courts across the street at Sydenham High School (SHS).
The convenience of being located next to the High School, and the support of Jim Latimer of SHS made it possible to run the concurrent eight team boys and girls tournaments.
Eric
Vreeken, acted as convener of the tournament, and also coaches the
Loughborough Girls team. He said that
tournaments like this give the girls a chance to play a lot
of games. Ive seen a huge improvement in my girls over the past two
weekends.
The weekend before the Loughborough PS tournament was the occasion of the Prince Charles Public School Girls Basketball tournament, a long- standing event that is run by Dennis Logan, a Grade 8 teacher at Prince Charles PS in Verona. The Prince Charles tournament is also held at Sydenham HS, with the support of SHS teacher Brian Rombough.
While
there is no Basketball League for Grade 7 and 8 students, there is a
district tournament structure within the Limestone Board, which takes
place in March. It sorts the different schools according to size and
sets up tournaments that are available to all schools within the
Board. As well, there are invitational tournaments in the Kingston
region and the surrounding area almost every weekend from late fall
through the winter, says Eric Vreeken. The tournaments fill up very
quickly, Vreeken added, and it is important for coaches to know
when the calls for entry are coming up in order to get a spot.
While Vreeken said it would be nice to see an actual league structure develop, he says that many of the players play in basketball leagues within Kingston as well. In Vreekens previous school, Land OLakes Public School in Mountain Grove, he supervised a successful basketball program as well, and many of the kids up there travelled to Kingston to play in Leagues and go to basketball camps in the summer.
During the round robin portion of the Loughborough tournament, some of the discrepancies between the teams was quite apparent, with the larger schools that have more players that play in Kingston Leagues quickly running up 20 point leads, before the coaches began pulling starters and replacing them with younger, smaller, and less skilled players.
In the boys' division, the tournament was won by Lancaster PS, who beat Loughborough PS handily in the final after dominating every game they played. In the girls' division, Vanier PS from Kingston took Odessa in the final. The host team from Loughbourough PS finished third.
While it took a lot of work, Eric Vreeken was happy with the way the tournament went and with the money raised through entry fees and the canteen for the Loughborough basketball programme. The seven game officials at the tournament were High School students from Sydenham HS and Sharbot Lake HS who volunteered their time.
