McMath Wildcats capped a dominating season in grand style by capturing the Grade 9 Provincial Invitational Girls Basketball Championships on the weekend at Heritage Woods Secondary in Port Moody.
The Wildcats produced four straight impressive wins at the 16-team tournament — capped by a 49-25 triumph over Abbotsford Traditional in Saturday’s championship game.
It marks the second straight year a city team has won this event with Steveston-London taking top honours in 2018.
McMath showed why it was given the No. 1 seed with a 50-18 win over Chilliwack’s GW Graham in the tournament opener as Kiayra Hohlweg earned player-of-the-game honours.
Next was a 50-18 romp of Abbotsford’s Robert Bateman in the quarter-finals with Teagan Ng getting the player-of-the-game award.
The Wildcats’ biggest challenge of the week still produced a 46-30 semi-final win against Maple Ridge — led by Holweg earning her second player-of-the-game award.
Tamar Gordon was a major force in the final — not only earning player-of-the-game honours but securing the tournament MVP award as well. Holweg and Ng were named First Team All-Stars.
Coached by Rod Jensen, Sean Lawson and Jayna Wilson, the Wildcats entered the season with high expectations after finishing third at the Grade 8 Provincials a year earlier. The lone defeat was by a single point to York House in the semi-finals.
McMath’s road to Port Moody began by capturing the Richmond Championship with a 36-28 win over Hugh Boyd to avenge an earlier league loss.
The girls then dominated the Vancouver and District Championships, capping a three-game run with a 55-31 win over North Shore champion Seycove. No team was within 19 points of them.
The Wildcats also captured the Burnaby Central Grade 9 Tournament back in late January, defeating Boyd 53-26 in the final.
The roster also features: Emma Bradley-Tse, Andreas Chan, Carys Jensen, Jaya Punia, Ashley Maedel, Abby Pogor, Natalia Lawson, Carina Wevers, Sara Karunaratne, Kendall Downie and Sophie Price.
At the buzzer…
Boyd wrapped up its impressive campaign with a ninth place finish at provincials. A narrow opening round loss to Bateman (29-25) was followed by wins over GW Grahan (57-30), city rival RC Palmer (49-27) and Burnaby Mountain (51-45). Palmer finished 12th.
