Team continues to dominate annual basketball tourney

The Skidegate Saints have done it again.

And in relatively easy fashion.

The Saints won the boys’ title at the British Columbia Junior All-Native Basketball Tournament, which concluded on March 21 in Kamloops.

This marked the third straight year the Skidegate side had won the provincial crown. A total of 25 teams competed in the boys’ division at the event, which featured players ages 17 and under.
The Saints easily won all five of their contests at the tournament, outscoring their opponents by at least 30 points each time.

Skidegate beat Van City (Vancouver) 86-49 in its championship match.

“They’re not just going through the motions,” Skidegate coach Desmond Collinson said of his players.  “You might think they are going through the motions. But there’s a spark with these guys that you have to go hard. You only get to play so many games and we want to work on our game.”

Collinson said his team’s height advantage over its rivals is just one of the reasons for the team’s successes. Centre Jesse Barnes, who is 6-foot-6, is the club’s tallest player.

Barnes was named to the tournament all-star team at the Kamloops event.

Another Saints’ player was also singled out. Shooting guard Nathan Vogstad was chosen as the tournament’s most valuable player.

“He dominated,” Collinson said of Vogstad. “He hit basically every shot that he took. And he’s very, very disciplined. He just does his thing every time he steps out on the court.”

Vogstad has now used up his junior eligibility. This coming season, however, he will take his talents and join the Simon Fraser University men’s basketball squad.

All 10 players on the Saints’ roster were members of all three of the provincial championship squads. Seven of them are also eligible to compete at the 2015 B.C. tournament, which will be staged in Nanaimo.

“Without Nathan it’s going to be a difficult task,” Collinson said. “But we’re going to train these guys hard and they’re going to be ready next year.”

In fact, Collinson is already predicting the Skidegate squad will once again be able to defend its title next year.

“You’d better believe we’re going to win it again,” he said.
Collinson, who is 28, has now won a total of six B.C. Junior All-Native titles. Besides his three championships as a coach he also won three as a player during his teen years.

“It’s definitely better as a coach,” he said. “It’s more of an emotional, physical and mental thing to teach these young men how to act like men.”

Collinson prides himself not only on the fact he is passing on some hoops knowledge, but he frequently also instructs his players on how to conduct themselves off the court.

“I’m doing my best do get these guys ready for college or university,” he said.

All members of the Saints also play for the Queen Charlotte Secondary School team. This squad made some headlines this season as it moved up several notches and played against the top high school clubs from B.C.

Because of its enrolment—only 128 students in Grades 8 through 12—Queen Charlotte was eligible to compete in an A level league. But Collinson, who also coaches the high school side, said it moved up to the highest calibre level and participated against Quad A clubs, from schools several times larger.

The Queen Charlotte team posted a 14-2 record against the larger schools and also qualified for the provincial high school AAAA tournament in Langley. The team was seeded 14th at that 16-team tourney and posted a 1-3 record.

“It was the first time ever any team has done that,” Collinson said of an  A-size school participating at the highest calibre AAAA level.

Meanwhile, a squad called Syilx from the Okanagan Nation beat Haisla 49-39 in the girls’ championship match at the Kamloops tournament.

Syilx had also won back-to-back provincial titles in 2010 and ’11.
“We don’t ever go into a tournament expecting to win,” said Syilx coach Amanda Montgomery, who has been a part of all three championship squads. “We just tell them to take it game by game.”

Sylix point guard Nicola Terbasket was the only team member who was also part of the team’s two previous provincial champs. The 17-year-old was also chosen as the MVP of the girls’ division.
“She had a great tourney,” Montgomery said of Terbasket, who was also named first team tournament all-star.

Another Syilx player, Elle-Leigh Snow, was also named a first-team all-star. And the champs also had two players chosen for the second-all star team; Terbasket’s younger sister Reilly and their cousin Madison Terbasket, who was also named the tournament’s best defensive player.