WESTLOCK – For a second-straight year the St. Mary School (SMS) Sharks dominated their home court and were crowned 2023 WJ Kallal Memorial Tournament champs.
The senior boys basketball team punctuated their perfect 3-0 record at the nine-team event played at the Rotary Spirit Centre (RSC) Feb. 3-4 with a convincing 74-64 victory over the Worsley Central School Wildcats in the Saturday-night final — running alongside the WJ Kallal was the eight-team Cathy Mitchell Memorial Tournament for senior girls squads, but due to SMS not fielding a girls team, there was no local representation.
Boys coach Ty Snell couldn’t have been happier for his bunch, saying this weekend’s title at the 37th-annual WJ Kallal is the “TSN Turning Point” in their quest to repeat as 1A North Central Zone champs and return to the provincial championships. En route to the title, the Sharks slew the Living Waters Christian Academy Warriors 92-45 in their Friday-night opener, then caged the Holy Trinity Academy Tigers from Drayton Valley 80-50.
“It was a good weekend, the boys really pulled it all together. There’s a lot of history with this tournament and there are a lot of different names on the trophy, so it’s nice to be able to add our name to it for back-to-back years,” said Snell, noting both the Sharks and Wildcats received honourable mentions in the most recent 1A provincial rankings.
“The Wildcats are a good team and we saw them at provincials last year, so it was nice to be able to beat them again.”
From here on out the Sharks head to a tournament in Hay Lakes Feb. 24-25, then set their sights squarely on the zone championship March 10-11 in Thorsby/Breton, with the 1A provincial championships the weekend after, March 16-18, at Coaldale Christian High School. As it stands, the Sharks are currently the top-ranked club in the zone after they won the boys side of the 16-team North Central Zone Ranking Tournament hosted Jan. 13-14 at the RSC.
“We called this our ‘TSN Turning Point’ of the year when things really needed to start coming together if we want to make a push at provincials. The boys played hard all weekend, were focused and were doing the little things right which we’ve been working on in practice which was encouraging to see,” Snell added.
