The Cedars Christian Eagles had a great team last season loaded with talent and experience but never had the chance to prove it on the high school boys basketball court.
The pandemic ruined their season before it even began and the Eagles were left wondering if they were worthy of their ranking as the fourth-best single-A team in B.C.
The Eagles retained their No. 4 status this season – the highest in Cedars school history – and they came into the 11-team North Central zone tournament as the team everybody wanted to beat.
As it turned out, nobody could.
The Eagles ruled the roost in all four games it took them to get their hands on the zone trophy and they took advantage of the dog-tired Fort St. James Falcons in Saturday’s final at the College of New Caledonia, winning 86-37.
Tony Kibonge led the all shooters in the final with 22 points, backed by a 14-point game from Mitch Crosina and a 10-point effort from Seth Hulka. Caiden Olund, with 10 points, was the only Falcon to reach double figures.
“This feels pretty good,” said Kibonge. “It’s my last year at provs and even if we don’t do good, we’ve got some kind of win. I’m happy with how we’ve done and how we’re doing right now and hopefully we can carry that on to provs and get a win, because we have a pretty high ranking and I think we have a pretty good shot at it.”
The Eagles jumped ahead 31-9 after10 minutes and held the Falcons off the scoreboard in the second quarter, leading 48-9.
“We have a lot of skilled players,” said Kibonge. “Even if we’re not the tallest, we can all shoot, we can all play defence and all drive and we’re just smart, so we can pick apart zones and when it’s bigger teams we can shoot our way out.”
Jake Doerksen is part of a core of Eagles that also includes Kibonge, Mitch Crosina, Jacob Oliver and Zach Wagner that first started playing together in Grade 8. Most of this year’s basketball team also won the zone volleyball championship a few months ago, which will make this school year even more memorable for the Cedars gang.
“Tony and Mitchell have been pulled up to (the senior team) the last few years so we haven’t really been all together before so now we’re seeing the effects of being all together and working with two of our best players,” said Doerksen.
“It’s just nice to see how well the team works together and the championship is a nice thing to get after a hard-working year. Not being able to play last year, we probably could have done it last year but unfortunately we weren’t allowed to play and it’s nice that, in my Grade 12 year, we got to bring it home.”
Cedars will claim the top seed for North Central in the 16-team single-A provincial tournament in Langley, March 9-12, but with three provincial berths, they won’t be the only team from North Central traveling south. Fort St. James and Northside Christian of Vanderhoof are also in the final-16 mix.
Eagles head coach Jeff Ludditt was convinced going into the zone tournament his team was well prepared, despite not having the ability to face the top single-A teams in the province due to pandemic health restrictions that ruled out tournament play for two months.
“We hadn’t seen any of these teams all year but we felt we’d put in the work, we felt we’d been diligent in practice and worked hard and we traveled around the province (for exhibition games) and played really well but we had to prove it this weekend and we did,” said Ludditt. “The boys worked their butts off and they stuck to what we worked on all year and stayed true to the plan and it worked out in the end.”
Point guard Mitch Crosina was picked as the tournament MVP and Ludditt said, in addition to Crosina’s basketball skills, it was like having another coach out there on the court.
“He does whatever we need,” said Ludditt. “If we need 40 points out of him, he’ll score 40. If we need him to run the offence, score six points and get 10 assists and play defence, he does that. He leads us, he’s effortless, he’s selfless and he’s a guy I can count on. He ran our last time-out because he saw something on the floor and I just handed that over to him. He does that naturally.”
The other Eagles players are Gabe Taylor, Liam Tiefersee, Andrew Isaac, Ryan Crosina and Tristan Bartrim. Frank Crosina is the assistant coach.
Fort St. James played two other games Saturday before the final. They faced Cedars in a game at noon and lost that 78-43, then defeated North Side Christian 69-37 in a playoff right before the championship game.
Tyler McVey, who somehow found the energy reserves to maintain his shot-blocking, pass-stealing defensive coverage for the Falcons, admitted he had nothing left by the end of the final.
“I’m exhausted,” said the Grade 12 forward McVey, picked for the top defensive player award.
“Two really tough games back-to-back really puts it on you. (The Eagles) are really good sports and it’s awesome to play them, it’s a challenge. It’s been a long time, our core five have been playing since Grade 8, so it’s good to have that connection on the court. We’re like brothers.”
The first-all star team included Hulka, Doerksen, Kibonge, Olund and Marek Durupt of Northside Christian. On the second all-star team were Chandry Evans, Sir Alexander Mackenzie; Oliver Morrow and Carson Frey, Northside Christian; Garrison Senner, Fraser Lake; and Leevi McNeill, Fort St. James.
Mountain Christian of Dawson Creek won the most sportsmanlike team award.
The Westside Academy Warriors were eliminated Saturday morning in a 53-51 loss to Fraser Lake.
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