With time ticking down in the junior boys final in Saturday's Mann Dental/P.G. Summer Hoops Classic 3-on-3 basketball tournament, Ben Wolitski saw a glimmer of hope.
Playing in his sixth game of the day at Duchess Park gymnasium, Wolitski was feeling the burn in his battle-fatigued limbs but saved a little something extra for the dying seconds of the championship match to force the issue against Team Black.
With one well-timed leap he swatted away a shot attempt from Tristan Yutuc and followed up with an energy surge to track down the loose ball in the corner and turned a fired. Wolitski's three-point shot found its mark and with eight seconds left the game was tied 45-45.
Overtime was a virtual certainty until Oliver Halpape, the junior boys division MVP, got the ball in the backcourt and stepped back to avoid Wolitski's check before launching a buzzer-beating three to give his team a thrilling victory.
"It was pretty tough to guard (Halpape), he was making lots of nice takes but I didn't expect him to make that shot," said Wolitski. "He wasn't making that many before that. I tried to do as much as I could, that was pretty close."
Halpape's teammates, Yutuc and Dawson Schmidt - all Duchess Park students - were at the centre of a mob scene on the court and their classmates and family members joined in the celebration as an exhausted Wolitski and his teammates - Aidan Lewis, Denis Kim and Tony Kibong - took a seat on the bench.
In the girls division final, Rebecca Landry helped orchestrate the perfect courtside sendoff before she moves on to university basketball next fall with the UNBC Timberwolves. Playing in her home gym, the Grade 12 senior picked up where she left off in last year's Summer Hoops Classic, teaming up with her Duchess Park teammates Hannah Loukes, Jasmine Schlick and Grace Caillier to hang a 35-23 defeat on Team Black - Tanesha Thomas, Katie Shchepotkin, Kayla Lupul and Samantha Harris.
Landry, 18, will join her sister Madison on the T-wolves next season, and her third-straight Hoops Classic win came as a bittersweet celebration. Rebecca played for the Condors senior team for four seasons.
"It's kind of sad because I played here for so long, but it's also a good feeling, kind of the last step before moving on," said Rebecca.
Loukes played in the tournament as a Grade 8 student in 2016 but missed it the next two years when her provincial team commitments took her out of the city.
"All of us are friends on our team so we thought it would be fun to put a team together and try to win," said Loukes. "It's fun going against other girls and the younger girls played well. It's nice playing with tall people. We've got some good chemistry."
Landry's Team Gray led 18-8 after the first 10-minute half and Team Black closed the gap to three by the midway mark of the second half but couldn't keep up the pressure. Try as they might, Black could not match the height of their opponents and that made a huge difference. Landry stands five-foot-10, Loukes is five-foot-11 and Schlick casts the longest shadow at six-foot-three.
Thomas, of Duchess Park, played in the senior division last year as a Grade 9 student. Her team recovered from a one-point loss in the opening game Saturday and reeled off four straight wins to get to the final. Of the eight players in the girls final, six attend Duchess Park.
"It's pretty fun that we get to compete with each other," said Thomas. "We had to play tough defence on them."
In the senior boys final, there was no denying another all-Duchess lineup led by Condor seniors Graydon Wolitski, Soren Erricson and Dan Zimmerman. They hooked up with Max Arnold and Ethan Wood to form a five-man hit squad and won 39-32 over Team Gray-White - Jackson Kuc, Aman Bansa, Randy Sandhu and Holden Black.
Wearing green T-shirts emblazoned with the words "City champions" on the back, the Condor boys built themselves a 13-4 lead. They were never in danger of losing it, with Zimmerman and Erricson hitting long shots and the older Wolitski setting the tone with his tremendous hustle and ball pursuit, which led to open looks and points. That earned him the Matt Pearce Memorial Award as the senior boys MVP, an honour shared with Landry and Halpape.
"That was pretty exciting, we had a really good team and it was fun," said Graydon Wolitski. "It was a really good tournament this year, a lot of the teams were evenly-matched and it was tough all along. I'm pretty tired now. It was a lot more hard-fought than last year."
For the Grade 12 Wolitski, the 3-on-3 win took away some of the sting he still felt three months after his Condors senior team lost the triple-A boys provincial semifinal 62-61 to North Delta, giving up the winning shot with 9.2 seconds left.
"It was really heartbreaking at provincials, not coming home with that one, so this was fun to all get together one last time and we won it," he said.
Wolitski and Zimmerman teamed up with Erricson last year to win the 3-on-3 senior title. For Erricson, it was his third consecutive Hoops Classic championship.
Kuc matched the older Wolitski's determination but along with his teammates he struggled to hit the net. The team was missing its best outside shooter, Cameron Sale, who rolled his ankle in the first game Saturday morning which sidelined him the rest of the day. Sandhu was also out of sync in the final with his shooting after hurting his ankle in the previous game.
"They played really well there," said Kuc. "They hit all their shots and we were pretty tired and we had two guys who rolled their ankles. They were all Grade 12s except for one guy."
In the post-tournament awards ceremony tournament organizer Nav Parmar told the crowd how close he came to canceling the tournament three days earlier when he learned his uncle in Duncan suddenly died at age 50. The 3-on-3 tournament is a fundraiser for the Heart and Stroke Foundation and in its five-year history it's raised more than $50,000.
