Carlton girls’ basketball team will compete in provincial tournament

The Carlton Comprehensive High School girls’ basketball team is returning to the Saskatchewan High Schools Athletics Association Provincial Basketball Tournament, also known as Hoopla.

Last year the Crusaders took home a bronze medal at Hoopla, which coach Jenn Ferguson said was a huge accomplishment since it was only the second year Prince Albert schools were competing against Saskatoon and Regina in the ‘5A’ division. The tournament will be held in Regina from Thursday to Saturday.

Carlton qualified for provincials after finishing first at the Rural Regional Tournament in Estevan over the weekend. Carlton entered the competition with a bye to the semi-finals where they defeated Swift Current 68-54.

“We’ve had a couple really good games with them this season and we knew going in that even though we’d had the upper hand in the first two games that they were going to play really hard and they were fighting for a spot, too,” Ferguson said.

“It was a close game until half and then we managed to pull away a little bit in the second half and beat them.”

Carlton faced the home team in the finals. Ferguson said Estevan went into the gold-medal match “coming off a high” after upsetting Notre Dame 74-69 in the semis. Once again the Crusader came out on top, knocking off the home team 69-53.

“The first half of the game they shot exceptionally well and scored a lot of three-point shots and held with us the first half,” Ferguson said.

“And then in the second half they started to run out of energy and we applied a little more pressure and then we managed to pull away in that one, too. So we feel pretty lucky to have advanced to Hoopla. It’s our goal all year to make it there.”

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