The province’s seventh ranked BVCS senior girls basketball team returned from an extended road trip to Valemount two weeks ago, after participating in the fourth annual Senior Girls Basketball Cross-zone Tournament.
Normally BVCS is unable to attend the Cross Zone tournament because they are held are in the Okanagan or the Lower Mainland/Fraser Valley, but with the shorter travel distance they decided to make the trip.
They left on Thursday Jan. 30 and played an exhibition game against Fraser Lake on the way to Valemount and beat them 68-60. Flora Badi was the leading scorer with 24 points.
The team stayed overnight in Prince George and then traveled on Friday morning to Valemount.
Their first game was against Fernie, a team just outside the provincial rankings. The Royals played well and came away with a convincing 61-23 win.
Leading the way was Christiana Reitsma with 22 points and Flora Badi with 12.
This put BVCS into the semi-finals on Saturday at noon against the second ranked Cedars Christian from Prince George.
The girls played poorly in the first quarter, trailing 20-6 at the break. The deficit climbed 37-21 by half-time.
In the second half the Royals improved their play and outscored Prince George 34-33 but they came up short 70-55.
Once again the Royals post players put up the majority of our points as Christiana again netted 20 and Flora contributed 19.
This was a positive result against a strong team.
Their final game was against upcoming provincial hosts Charles Bloom from Lumby.
The Royals played a strong game from start to finish and opened up a 19 point lead and that allowed for all the players to get some playing time and the final scored ended up 56-46 for BVCS.
The guards came to play in this one as Rebecca Kingston led the way with 15 points and Abi Joseph finished with 11.
The win secured third place for the team and should help them to maintain their ranking for the next week or so.
The final was a match-up between Cedars, the number two ranked team in the province and Kelowna Christian, the number three ranked team.
Christiana Reitsma and Abi Joseph were both named tournament all-stars.
-Contributed