The College Heights Cougars still have work to do before they can officially take their place at the 24-team provincial junior A girls basketball tournament in Langley .
If they don't get that far, it would be a colossal upset.
The two finalists at this week's North Central zone championship qualify to play for the B.C. crown and it seems like nothing is going to prevent that from happening for the Cougars. They are deep at every position and haven't lost a game in two years to another junior A opponent from their zone.
They'll take a 21-3 record with them onto the zone court at Duchess Park. The Cougars are the top seed at the eight-team tournament and will open Thursday at 3 p.m. against the Duchess Park B Condors.
The Cougars easily won the district championship last weekend at Kelly Road. They opened with a 60-10 win over Westside, then took out Duchess Park in the final, 83-37.
"Our team is really disciplined and so that's one of the things that works to our advantage," said Cougars head coach Dave Fuller. "We've been down in a number of games and we just play our game, starting from the defence, and work in building the play into what we think is a pretty good offence.
"We're very aggressive and so we do get into foul trouble from time to time, but we've got some depth on our bench. We've got some talent - many of these girls have played together for three years. They started as a junior B team two years ago and they beat most of the junior A teams at the time."
Of their three losses this season, one was in a tournament in Kamloops (a two-point loss to Sa-Hali), one came at the Kelowna tournament (a four-point loss to Okanagan Mission) and one was against the Nechako Valley senior team.The Cougars set a goal for themselves at the start of this season to beat a senior team and did that two weekends ago when they beat the Prince George Polars 85-83 in the final of the Prince George Secondary School senior tournament.
"That was the best game I think we've had all season," said Cougars point guard Rachel Louckes. "We played so well and our transition was insane, from offence to defence we played so well together and it was so much fun."
In that PGSS tournament the junior A Cougars also beat Caledonia of Terrace and avenged their earlier loss to Nechako Valley.
The Cougars were missing three starters that weekend - Kayla Lupul and Alex Freeman were on a student exchange in Japan and six-foot-four post Harleen Ghuman was away on a holiday in Mexico - but didn't miss a beat.
The five-foot-nine Louckes joined the junior A team as a Grade 8 player last year and the team mostly remained intact for this season. Louckes played last summer on the provincial under-15 team and her ability to quarterback the Cougars' offence has paid huge dividends.
The Cougars put together a 25-4 record last season, which ended when they went 2-2 at the 24-team provincial championship in Langley.
"We all work so hard together and we all just bond together," said Louckes. "It's such a competitive sport and we all love it so much. Our goal is top-10 in provincials and we are all really focused on the same goal. It's always been a dream. There's a lot of tough competition there but I think if we work really hard that's a reasonable goal "
Lockes comes from a basketball family. Her dad Wade is an assistant to Dave Fuller on the junior A team and also helps Louise Holmes coach the Duchess Park Condors senior team, which includes his older daughter Hannah, a Grant MacEwan University recruit for next season.
Candace Yu is the other assistant on the junior A Cougars. Fuller says he leans on Yu and Louckes and their superior knowledge of basketball to teach techniques and game strategies to the players while he plays on the strengths of his full-time occupation as business coach to instill in his players team-building and leadership skills.
"I'm trying to develop character and leadership and develop a culture within this team that will mallow them to win under difficult and stressful situations and keep their calm," said Fuller. "Those are skills we're trying to teach to the girls to use for a lifetime. It's got to be more than a couple years of basketball. It's really about building character."
Because they don't have teams of their own age group who are comparable in ability, the Cougars play weekly games against women's teams.
The core of the Cougars roster intends to move up to the senior team next year and that bodes well for success at the provincial senior level but Fuller doesn't like to think what could be in store for his team that far down the road.
"We're just worried about the present, we're not worried about next year," he said. "We just want to do our best this year and see where we can take it. We're playing to win and playing to have fun."
The other players on the team are: Reese Wiseman, Rebecca Fuentes, Sophia Fuller, Carly Marotta, Olivia Vigue, Mirena Dasilva, Ainslee Rushton and Bree Engbrecht.
The junior A provincial championship in Langley is set for Feb. 26-29.
