By Jessica Book
It was a disappointing ending to a season that wasn’t half bad.
The Lisgar Lords’ season ended Nov. 16 with a 73-36 loss to the St. Matthew’s Tigers in the opening round of the National Capital Secondary School Athletic Association high school senior girls basketball playoffs.
The Lords had hoped to make it to the second round of playoffs after a season with seven wins and five losses, but the Tigers were too strong.
“Our first goal was to make the playoffs,” says Lisgar coach Karen Cairns.
“But we wanted to go at least one more round.”
“We were expected to lose,” says Lisgar co-captain Celeste Yu. “But I think we still played all right.”
In the face of the season-ending loss, Cairns says the team played “quite well” during the regular season and assistant coach Kathryn Fleming agrees.
“I thought the girls had a really great season,” says Fleming.
“They really seemed to enjoy it and have fun. They really played well together as a team.”
With this year’s basketball season over and done with, the coaches can look forward to a promising year next season, since the Lords will lose only two players to graduation.
Celeste Yu is one of the two players graduating this year.
Neither she nor Laura Young, both team co-captains, will be back next year.
“I honestly thought at the beginning of the year we’d be a good team because a lot of the girls had played club ball,” says Yu.
Club ball is important in developing players’ skills because it lasts the whole year, not just two months like the high school basketball league. “We did pretty well, though.”
This is Cairns’ first year with Lisgar after spending 24 years teaching at Gloucester High School, 23 of which were spent coaching.
The physical education teacher didn’t coach last year because of the provincial government’s work-to-rule legislation.
Cairns says there’s little difference between coaching at Gloucester or Lisgar.
“Kids are kids no matter where you go,” Cairns says.
“I expected to do the same here as I had there. We always won more than we lost at Gloucester, and that’s what happened this year (at Lisgar).”
Yu says that Cairns’ coaching style was different than what the team had in previous years, but it made playing the game a lot of fun. “It was really unstructured,” says Yu.
“We did a lot on our own for practice. We’d just be developing our own skills. It was fun, it was definitely fun.”
As for next year, Cairns hesitates to guess at what lies in store.
“We’ll still remain competitive,” says Cairns. “But I won’t make any predictions.”
While Cairns remains wary about forecasting next season, Yu says she expects the team should do well.
“I think the team is going to be really good next year,” she says.
“There’s only two of us who won’t be back, and a lot of the other girls are playing club ball.”