The Vanier Crusaders hosted a basketball double-bill last Friday at Vanier Catholic Secondary School.

The first game saw the Vanier Junior Varsity team fall to Tim Brady’s Canada Games team 69-53. The game was close through nearly three quarters (13-13 at the end of the first; 29-28 Wolf Pack at the end of the half), but then the Canada Games team started pulling away. Vanier actually led 38-37 with 3:48 left in the third, but the Canada Games team took over, surging to a 48-40 lead at the end of the third period and never looking back.

High scorers for the Canada Games team were Kiiwaadin Swan with 23 points, John Musiime with 15 and Ben Bonilla with 12 points.

Crusaders high scorers were Ethan Wilks with 19 and Isiah Cabiso with 14 points.

According to Crusaders coach Sean McCarron, it’s been a while since the Crusaders have seen game action.

“Over two years since we’ve seen Crusader jerseys on an official gym floor like this, playing games,” stated McCarron.

“So nice to get the first one out of the way. I’ve got lots of boys that want to play, so we’re not overly worried about a win or a loss at this point. For some of these kids, they’ve never actually played basketball formally before, or at least they haven’t played since Grade 7 or Grade 8, including some of the Grade 12s. So a lot of nerves out there, lots of turnovers, some guys still not sure where they need to be on the floor, so the next three weeks, four weeks, wherever we’re at, it’ll be fun to see if we can teach them a few things based on what we saw tonight. But super-fun to see them out.”

The Vanier Junior Varsity (JV) team is a mix of players.

“There’s a bunch of Grade 11’s on there, so juniors, but we had Grade 12s out there, we had a couple Grade nines playing as well. So I’ve divided my team into our Varsity and our JV, but some guys are going to be switching between teams, depending on how many more games we play, and that way, everyone can get just a few more minutes.

“And playing Canada Games is pretty fun, because some of those guys are Vanier guys and some of those junior boys from F.H. (Collins), I’m coaching right now. So I get a chance to see them in action. Some of those kids played really well. When you’re playing against Kiiwaadin (Swan) – he’s one of the best young players in town, so he’s a handful. He’s an excellent player – he did a lot of good things.”

Swan is a guard on the Canada Games team.

Overall, McCarron thought that it was a good challenge for his young charges.

“Isiah (Cabiso), our Grade nine player, played really really well. Ethan (Wilks) fouled out in the third quarter. He’s our most experienced player. So all things considered, the last six minutes got out of hand, score-wise, but we’re only down five at that point and Coach (Tim) Brady is doing a great job with that Canada Games crew – that training squad – they play good defence, they took care of the ball and they’ve got some really good players. So it was a really nice challenge for my JV squad and hopefully we’ll get them next time, but we’ll see. If not, we’ll learn.”

Canada Games coach Tim Brady said it’s the first game they’ve played in a while as a team.

“It is. We have a training squad ... these boys are on it. And then there’s boys that are playing in this game (Vanier Varsity versus Porter Creek) that are on it as well. So we took our younger boys in that training group and played just now and then some of our older guys are playing right here.

“We have practices and training sessions and play a little four-on-four we call it five on five to five and we work our training like that, but kind of the first semi-game we’ve had that was kind of like a game, was officiated.”

Brady said his bunch does have some recent playing experience, though.

“These guys play all the time in the Filipino leagues and in the Whitehorse men’s league, so they’re playing games, but – this group was selected in the middle of February, so this is our first game. We’re actually going out in May to play in a tournament with 22 boys in our training squad. We broke those down into two teams. We’re playing in a tournament in May and then one in July, maybe one in-between. But we have to select our top-12. We still haven’t done that. We’re still working through that.”

Brady’s group is putting together a team for the Canada Games August 6-21 in Niagara Falls (and St. Catharines).

Brady offered analysis of the game.

“It was a little rusty. We had a system that we wanted to work on, and we did. We were trying to get the team that we played to push the ball up with their left hand – we call ‘lock-left’. We got some good work at that. The back end of that defence can improve, but that’s why we play, to see what we can do better and what we need to work on. So we’ll be back at it tomorrow at practice and we’ll have some of that stuff from this game in mind to work on in our session.

“Other than that, it was good. I know all the players. They’ll all been – I run the Wolf Pack program for basketball and all of those boys, on both teams, have been in that Wolf Pack program at one time or another. It’s always good to see them and to get ‘em playing, especially this year; the seasons were shortened and pretty well cancelled.

“We took out some teams through Wolf Pack in September to play in the B.C. club national tournament. We took 48 boys to that, so we had four teams,” he added.

“It went really well. And we took a girl’s team. We took a women’s team as well. So that was the last time I’ve been on the court like that, outside of today.”

“Next is the Victoria Day tournament in Calgary and then we’re on a regular four-a-day practice training session where we go during the week, work on different things, do some different things on the court – some skill, some system stuff to work on. We just sort of keep going,” related Brady.

“So we’re in the second quarter of our training. Our first quarter just ended. The next four or five weeks is our second. And we’ll be kind of refining some of the things. We hope to get all of our guys out for that, because we’ve got – like I said, if you watch this game, five or six of those boys are with us as well.”

The second game saw the Vanier Varsity team dominate a team from Porter Creek 118-71. Gage Sweeney poured in 36 points for Vanier. Angelo Coringal chipped in 24.

Top scorers for Porter Creek were Arlow Walker with 30 points, Navaya Webb with 13, and Fynn Ritchie, who netted 11 points, mostly with 3-pointers.