The Seycove Seyhawks completed their rise to the top of the North Shore senior girls basketball world this week, grabbing the Premier League title for the first time in team history.
Seycove, a small AA-sized school, went undefeated against the best ballers on the North Shore, topping their regular season run off with a 65-42 win over AAA powerhouse Handsworth on Wednesday. The win gave the Seyhawks an 8-0 record in Premier League play, outscoring their opponents by 299 points in the process.
“It feels good,” head coach Darcy Grant said about claiming the Premier League banner. “Handsworth is a very strong team. For us I think the ability to match up against a good AAA team is always a good test for us, especially right before the playoffs. It’s exciting. It’s a small little victory that needs to be celebrated, but I think also at the same time for our girls and our coaching staff, our goals and expectations are on a provincial championship. We’re enjoying it but at the same time we know there’s an incredible amount of work left to be done to get to those goals that we’ve set out for ourselves.”
The Seyhawks will now turn their attention to hosting the North Shore AA playoffs where they will take on Collingwood Tuesday night as the second part of a semifinal doubleheader that will open with St. Thomas Aquinas taking on Windsor. The winners of those two matchups will play for the North Shore AA title Thursday starting at 7:30 p.m. at Seycove.
Given their results throughout the season, including an appearance in the championship final of the prestigious Top 10 Shootout held last month at Centennial, the Seyhawks will be heavy favourites in the North Shore AA playoffs. The team, however, will be taking nothing for granted, said Grant.
“Our focus is going to be the same as it has been all year,” he said. “It’s really not going to depend on who we play. Our coaching staff still feels that we’re far from playing our best basketball. Our focus is on trying to improve our offence and our defence, to limit mistakes and not turn over the ball and shoot better. Our focus is really on us and how well we can play.”
The Seyhawks are led by potent twin tower attack of forwards Claudia Hart and Sage Stobbart. Team captain Hart, who has committed to playing at Simon Fraser University next season, is the only Grade 12 starter on the young Seyhawks squad and the team’s inspirational leader.
“She’s somebody that carries with her a certain swagger and a certain confidence,” said Grant. “She never gets too high, she never gets too low. She’s very even keel, she’s very composed.”
Stobbart, meanwhile, stands six-foot-two and has a deft touch around the hoop that makes her a very tough player to defend.
“She runs the floor incredibly well, she has great touch and great finesse close to the hoop, when she boxes out she’s able to rebound just about anything,” said Grant. “Her foul shooting has improved incredibly. She’s slowly starting to step into a leadership role, not so much vocally but more as in a lead by example on the court. She’s maturing, and she’s starting to come into her own in a real basketball sense.”
The Grade 11 player has earned interest from Canada Basketball, attending several national team age-group identification camps. That has helped her game but has also made her a target on the court, said Grant, adding that Stobbart has responded well to the challenge.
“For her, because she was always taller than everybody else, basketball was kind of easy for her,” he said. “It wasn’t until this year and last year when she’s being challenged more and we’re playing some of the top competition in the province and teams are beginning to scout her and kind of understand her game and to strategize against her that she now has to be a little more dominant. And she’s learning that, she’s figuring that out. And as she’s gaining more experience she’s just evolving into that player that she can be and she’s going to become.”
Co-captain Kayla Krug rounds out Seycove’s leadership group.
“Kayla is somebody who has put in an incredible amount of work in terms of her skill and ability,” said Grant. “She’s somebody whose outside shot has really progressed and improved a great deal. And as she kind of finds her way through the senior league for the first time, she’s slowly gaining experience and understanding the game and becoming more comfortable with it. She’s really starting to come into her own.”
The Seyhawks have their sights set firmly on the AA provincial championships running March 2-5 at the Langley Events Centre. Seycove finished sixth at last year’s championships and will be looking for more this time around.
“Last year with the team we had, we played well,” said Grant. “I think we played kind of above our own expectations. I think this year our expectations are even higher.”
The Seyhawks are currently fourth in the provincial AA rankings and they’ll be looking to move up into the medals at the big show. Seycove has played a couple of close games against the teams ranked ahead of them this year.
“We’re still a young team,” said Grant. “We lack a lot of experience, experience we’re trying to gain by playing really top competition.”
With four starters slated to return next season as well, Grant is hoping that the Seyhawks will continue to rise for at least another year.
“Claudia will be somebody who is very difficult to replace, but we have a very strong core of young women,” he said. “We’re hoping that this year we’ll be very successful and the same next year as well.”
It’s all new territory for the small Deep Cove school that was never known as a basketball hotbed before their surge over the past couple of years.
“It takes a bit of time, but it’s going,” Grant said of Seycove’s emergence on the hardwood that has seen the Seyhawks vault past traditional powerhouses like Handsworth and Argyle. “This is just a continuation of a culture change. Success is kind of breeding success. We’re happy over here, we’re happy with how things are going. (But) it’s never perfect.”
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The senior girls AAA playoffs will also run this week hosted by the Handsworth Royals. A semifinal doubleheader will take place Tuesday with Sentinal taking on Handsworth at 6 p.m. followed by Argyle facing off against Carson Graham. The winners of those two matchups will meet in the North Shore AAA final Thursday starting at 7:30 p.m. at Handsworth.
