The Northside Christian North Stars of Vanderhoof are single-A boys basketball champions of the North Central zone.
They cinched the trophy Saturday morning in Fort St. James, completing an unbeaten 3-0 run when they defeated the Cedars Christian Eagles of Prince George 62-53 in the zone final.
That locked up the first North Central berth for Northside in the provincial championship in Langley, March 5-8.
But there was still plenty of basketball to be played to determine that second provincial berth.
The Chetwynd Cavaliers took on the Fort St. James Falcons, vying for a shot at Cedars Christian in the final game of the tournament, and the Cavs took that one 74-63.
The ensuing battle for second place went down to the wire Saturday night and the Eagles prevailed in overtime, beating Chetwynd 78-76 to guarantee their spot in the 16-team BC tournament.
“Kaeden Paulsen hit a running left-handed buzzer-beater to win it, it was absolutely wild,” said Cedars head coach Jeff Ludditt. “One of my guards kicked it up the Kaeden and he actually had two defenders in front of him and he did a little step through and put it in off his left hand just as the buzzer went.”
The Fort St. James gym was packed and noisy and that added to the electric atmosphere.
“It was back and forth the whole way, it was tense, and the gym was full of people screaming and yelling, I haven’t been part of game like that in a long time,” said Ludditt. “Most of the teams stuck around to cheer.”
The Cavaliers rallied to force overtime on a last-second shot from Nate Siemens.
“We were up three and their star player (Siemens), we tried to contain him all game and he was amazing,” said Ludditt.
“He came down and hit a deep three to tie and I think we hit a two-and-one, so we were up three again and they had the ball with 13 seconds left and he hit an even deeper three off the glass to tie it. We had a few seconds to get a shot up but nothing fell and it went to overtime.”
Cedars has qualified for the provincial tournament five years in a row. Ludditt said the Eagles will likely be ranked near the bottom of the 16-team pool, while he figures Northside will be ranked anywhere from seventh to ninth.
Cedars finished near the bottom of the provincial standings a year ago but the Eagles won bronze in 2022 and were fifth in BC in 2023.
“Most of our games have been played against double-A, triple-A and quad-A teams because we’ve stayed in the city mostly, so we had a bit of rough season from a won-loss standpoint but it’s also toughened the boys up and got them to play a pretty good brand of basketball.”
North Central zone single-A boys basketball tournament
Individual awards
MVP: Graham Yoder, Northside
Top defensive player: Kaeden Paulsen, Cedars
First team all stars
Kale Lundgard, Tumbler Ridge -
Evan Gabriel, Sir Alexander Mackenzie
Skyler Hanks, Fort St. James
Alex Ready, Mountain Christian
Ezra Goulty, Mountain Christian
Second team all stars
Jared Mito, Chetwynd
Nole Lantz, Fort St. James
Ryan Giesbrecht, Northside
Neil Hendersen, Cedars
Nate Siemens, Chetwynd
Final placements
1st Northside
2nd Cedars
3rd Chetwynd
4th Fort St James
5th Mountain Christian
6th SAMS
7th Tumbler Ridge
8th Fraser Lake
