Hosting a home tournament is never an easy thing.
On top of having to be welcoming hosts to several different schools from across the province, a host team also has the added pressure of performing well in front of family and friends; an added pressure that has done in many a talented team throughout the years.
However that added pressure did not deter the YRHS Lady Raiders from putting together one of their strongest home tournament performances in recent seasons.
聽The Lady Raiders, coached by Jessica Schmidt, Tony Hayden and Al Kyle, went 2-1 throughout the two day tournament, dropping Yorkton rival Sacred Heart 59-26 in their tournament opener before demolishing Regina鈥檚 Johnson Wildcats 63-29 in the semi-final.
The convincing win over Johnson sent the Raiders to the tournament final against Moose Jaw鈥檚 Vanier Vikings.
The final game against Vanier was a back and forth affair throughout the first half as the Raiders and Vikings continually traded baskets before a last second three pointer gave the visitors a 29-26 lead at the break.
The Vikings would increase their lead throughout the second have, outscoring the host Raiders 32-24 and handing the Raiders a 61-50 defeat in the tournament final.
Yet despite the loss, head coach Schmidt felt the team performed exceptionally well throughout the competition. 鈥淚 think the girls played an outstanding tournament. We knew that we could make it to the final and that was the ultimate goal all week,鈥� offered Schmidt, adding that the team hopes that the results from this tournament will set an example for future Lady Raider teams. 鈥淚 have been told that they can鈥檛 remember the last time that our senior girls鈥� team had made it to the final of our home tournament so we wanted to set the tone for the following years by making it there this time.鈥�
The home tournament also saw some player put forth arguably their best effort this season.
Players such as grade 11 athletes Olivia Tomcala and Kaitlin Mak raised their game to a higher level this past weekend, something that coach Schmidt took notice of. 鈥淥livia Tomcala in the post, she is kind of coming into her own after taking a year off, 鈥渟uggested Schmidt. 鈥淪he rebounds like crazy and gets a lot of put-backs for us and In our last game here Kaitlin Mak took three charges, which as a coach you鈥檙e always happy to see a player sacrifice their body for the ball and take one for the team, so to take three charges in the game, that鈥檚 just awesome.鈥�
However Mak and Tomcala weren鈥檛 the only two Lady Raiders that shone in the tournament. Offensive dynamo Hunter Frankfurt also brought her 鈥楢鈥� game all weekend long. 鈥淗unter Frankfurt in our second game against Johnson ended up getting 20 rebounds,鈥� mentioned the Lady Raider head coach. 鈥淲e had 60 rebounds as a team, she had a third of that and she really played well all weekend.鈥�
Frankfurt also had 14 points in the semi-final win over Johnson to give her a double-double.
Tomcala and Tess Berezowski led the Lady Raider offence in the win over Sacred Heart as each player scored 10 points. Tomcala also hauled in nine rebounds while Berezowski took care of business with five blocks.
Alex Flaman led all Raider scorers in the final against Vanier. The grade 10 player scored 10 points聽 while picking up five rebounds while Leah Fleger scored nine points, picked up eight boards and chipped in with three assists in the defeat.
Next up
The Lady Raiders will be in action this coming weekend when they travel to Estevan for a tournament on Friday and Saturday.
