Immanuel Christian School

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The JV Girls have played 4 games since the last post - one league game and 3 tournament games.  Although the team did not come away with any wins, improvement was shown in all of them.

The first game was a league game against St. Boniface.  The girls came out determined to score some points in the first quarter, and did so, although not as many as St. Boniface, being down 14-4 after the first quarter.  The second quarter was our most even quarter of the young season, with both teams scoring 6 points to bring us to a halftime score of 20-10 in favor of St. Boniface.  St. Boniface pulled away in the 3rd quarter, however, scoring 18 points to our 2, and the game ended with a score of 49-14 in favor of St. Boniface.  Our short bench was a factor once again, as we obviously tired over the course of the game and could not keep up with the St. Boniface team.  Shayna Toet led us with 6 points and 3 steals (along with Sarah Nienhuis, who also had 3 steals), while Nicole Poppe once again led us on the boards with 9.

Our next game action was the first game of our home tournament, where we played in front of almost all of the elementary students and some of the high school students.  It certainly brought a different dynamic to the game, as the noise levels were quite something at times.  Although the girls were a little unnerved by the noise at first, they got used to it and played their best.

Our opponent in this game was Steinbach Christian.  For the first time this season, we scored more points than an opponent in a quarter, finishing the first quarter up 10-8.  Quite something for us!  Unfortunately, we could not maintain this lead, due in part to a rather unpleasant incident.  While driving for the basket, Shayna Toet tripped over the foot of one the Steinbach players, and landed awkwardly.  She came up holding her arm - something was definitely not right with it.  She ended up going to the hospital, and the next morming had surgery on it.  It turned out that she had broken one bone, and another bone had buckled.  Unfortunately this means that Shayna’s basketball season is over for this year.  The team had a difficult time regrouping after that, and the lead slowly increased for Steinbach Christian.  The final score was 42-22 for Steinbach Christian - the good news was that this score was the closest for the team so far this year.  Nicole led us with 12 points, 15 rebounds, two blocks and three steals (the 15 rebounds in a game putting her in the top 5 all-time for rebounds in a game for JV Girls) .

The loss put us on the consolation side of the tournament, and our next opponent would be at 7:30pm that evening against Gimli.  We had beaten them in our tournament the two previous years, but this year would be different.  By halftime we were down 30-13, and the final score was 58-20.  An odd thing in this game was that until just before the end of the game all of our points were either from free throws or were scored by Nicole.  Nicole finished the game with 14 points, and Kristi Raap and Marjorie Buist both had 8 rebounds to lead the team.  Sarah led us with 2 steals.  Kudos to Gimli for working in the second half to keep the score down; doing some extra passing before shooting and refraining from running any fast breaks.

This loss put us into the 7th place game against Ste Anne.  This would be our only game on Saturday, so we hoped that we would be fresh and ready to go.  We might have been fresh, but several of the girls were a little banged up, with a few bum ankles and knees spread out over the team.  We were down 19-6 at halftime, and 21-8 after the 3rd quarter (yes, that score is correct - both teams only scored one basket each that entire quarter - what great defense! (or offenses that struggled, take your pick)).  We picked it up in the 4th quarter, scoring as many points in the quarter as we had the rest of the game.  However, it was not enough to get us the win, and we lost 27-16.  The good news was that this was the lowest margin of loss that we had so far (11 points), and we continued to improve.  One highlight of the game was Caitlyn getting her first points of the season.  However, probably the comedic highlight of the game (and season!) was when we were running down the court on offense.  Kristi was open, and so Sarah passed her the ball.  As she did so, she noticed that Kristi was not looking at her, so she called her name to alert her that the ball was coming.  Rather than looking for the ball and trying to catch it, Kristi turtled, falling to the ground and covering her head.  The ball bounced off her back and to one of the Ste Anne players.  I think all the players had to stop for a moment and get over their laughter before continuing to play, while the fans took a little longer before they were able to get over what they had just seen.  I’ve hada  player duck out of the way of the ball, and another simply collapse to avoid the ball, but this was the first time that I’ve had a player so closely imitate a turtle in order to avoid the ball.

Nicole led us once again with 10 points and 11 rebounds, while Marjorie and Nicole each had a block.

The team is getting better every time out, and especially during the last game some effective passing was noted.  We’ll see if that carries over into our next game, which will be on Monday against Balmoral Hall.

The coach

The JV Girls basketball team played their first league game on Thursday against Linden Christian.  The team was looking forward to having the opportunity to play, but were a little nervous about playing their first game against the powerhouse team from Linden.   The nerves were evident in this game, as we got off to a very slow start, and had numerous defensive breakdowns in our zone. (We did improve in this area as the game wore on and as the nerves settled down a little bit.)  It also did not help that we were thin in numbers, as fatigue set in and we could not give adequate rest to the players as the game wore on.  Despite this, the girls played hard all game, and the coach was pleased with their effort.  Some highlights of the game were:

1. Alina’s three point attempt that just rimmed out.  Alina has told the coach that a goal for the season was to score more points than she did last seas0n - a made 3 pointer would have almost brought her to last season’s total.

2. Shayna’s very casual shot and basket - she put the shot up with exquisite form and follow through, and swish - nothing but net.

3. The support from the fans, both the ICS ones and the Linden ones, who cheered on the team through to the final buzzer.

Some of the lowlights were: Sarah taking a shot to the throat area during the third quarter and Kristi turning her ankle during the fourth quarter (both events causing us to have zero subs during that time period) .  Despite these events, the team managed to carry on the end of the game, giving their all.

Two curious points - first, the team only had two fouls throughout the game, one of them being a technical for interfering with a Linden inbound. Second, it was the first JV Girls game that I can remember that had 2 technical fouls called, one to each team (and for the same infraction - interfering with an inbound pass).  There goes our streak of no technical games.  We had one called against us about halfway through last season; maybe we’ve gotten this year’s out the way already then.

Congratulations to Linden on their victory. Kudos as well to the Linden team both on a well-played game and on keeping the score respectable.

Nicole Poppe led the team in points (4), rebounds (7) and blocks (2).  Mikayla Teitsma and Sarah Nienhuis tied for the lead in steals with 3 each.

Our next game action is next week Thursday at St. Boniface. 

The coach

Skating Permission Slip

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