High school basketball season runs from December to March but for Rachel Loukes it’s pretty much a year-round passion.
If she’s not out directing traffic as a leader on the court for the College Heights Cougars, chances are Loukes will find another assignment playing club basketball locally or in the Greater Vancouver summer league or making her presence felt training with her provincial peers in the Basketball BC high performance group.
Now in her Grade 11 year as one of the key cogs on a young Cougars team that appears strong enough to take a run at the B.C. triple-A provincial championship, Loukes got her chance to show off in front of a big Prince George crowd when the Cougars played Thursday and Friday in the Condor Classic senior tournament at Duchess Park Secondary School.
She’s just hoping it won’t be their last hurrah, with COVID rearing its ugly head again.
Loukes and the Cougars took on the host Duchess Park Condors in Friday’s final and cruised to an 85-38 win in the final school gathering before the students began their Christmas break. Sophia Fuller got College Heights rolling with a couple of early threes and they jumped ahead of the Condors 14-0 and took a 44-11 lead into the second half.
After missing the entire 2020-21 season due to the pandemic, the Cougars are among several high school teams in the city with plans to travel to out-of-town tournaments to try elevate their game so they can compete with the top teams in the province when the playoffs really get cooking in March. That competition calendar is now in a state of flux due to new provincial health restrictions that took effect earlier this week which effectively ban all club competitions until Jan. 31. Whether that mean high school gyms will remain dark coming out of the break is still unclear.
“It’s been fun so far,” said Loukes. “We just heard news about the tournaments maybe being paused so it was nice to spend at least one last thing together and I’m glad we worked so hard out there. We were just kind of wanting to leave it all out there on the floor in case it’s our last thing. The whole season has been unpredictable and we’ve had to prepare ourselves for that, but I’m glad we could just get back on the court today.”
Loukes plans to attend Team B.C. tryouts in March with a goal of making the U-18 provincial team that will play in the Canada Summer Games in Niagara, Ontario in August. The Condors limited her to eight points in the opening half but there was no stopping Loukes in the third quarter and she hit for 12 more points before she found a seat for the fourth quarter to allow the Cougars’ reserves some playing time.
The Cougars are ranked fourth in the triple-A provincial chart and are the team to beat in the North Central district. Eight of their players were on the College Heights junior A squad that finished 10th at the 2020 provincial championship in Langley.
“They’re amazing and Rachel is definitely a key factor in that but they’re really hard to beat, their press is really strong and it’s going to be hard to beat them,” said Condors senior guard Mataya Lyons, whose team drew honourable mention status in the preseason poll. “They’re really aggressive on defence, I must say. They are after every loose ball, after every pass in the passing lane, it’s hard to get anything through them.”
“It was a slow start for us but I think in the second half we pulled through and we started getting better and we were working harder and having that tenacity and grit to get through it. It’s really nice to have competition in the city.”
Lokes picked up 20 points in the game, while Lauren Caceres collected 17 and Fuller finished with 14. Farrah Mahmoud led the Condors with a 10-point effort in a front of big home crowd in the Duchess Park gym.
“Right from the start we wanted to show them who we are and what we play for and I liked our transitions right away, we just hustled and hustled,” said Loukes. “We all just blend together so well and we all have the same goal and were driven to work towards it. Provincials has always been a big thing for us.”
College Heights is loaded with speedy guards who don’t give up much time or space and that leads to turnovers. They also have some height working in their favour, with six-foot-four post Harleen Ghuman operating on a different horizontal plain than most of her peers.
“What we do is we try to disrupt and we try to get a lot of steals, which we did tonight,” said Cougars head coach Wade Loukes, Rachel’s father. “We’ve got really good shooters. Rachel Is a good penetrator so if she gets the ball in her hands she makes good decisions and girls are looking to be open and are ready to shoot the ball.
“It’s a fast pace we play and it’s disruptive to other teams.”
School teams are hopeful that B.C. School Sports will find a way to keep their games happening when it announces on Jan. 4 how schools will be affected by the new rules over the next month.
“We have two tournaments planned, one was in Kamloops in mid-January and the other was in Surrey at the beginning of February and right now the Kamloops one is off the table, but we’ll see, “ said coach Loukes. “The girls are positive, we hope it turns around.”
