U-20 Boys’ Basketball Captures DII Championship at CAIS Invitational Tournament

By Henry Zacher ('18)

I have been on countless Greenwood trips including for fall and winter OE, sports teams and classes. Last week, I added Halifax to the long list of the places that I have visited with Greenwood for the CAIS national basketball tournament.

Our 15-man roster along with Ms. Robson, Ms. Douglas and Mr. Farbstein excitedly met at Pearson Airport early last Wednesday morning for our flight. We were greeted by a bus after landing and driven to the Lord Nelson hotel in downtown Halifax. After getting settled in our rooms, we were given a few hours to get some lunch and check out the area near our hotel. We enjoyed the sun as we walked to the Halifax Public Library so we could get some homework done. We got dinner and then headed back to the hotel to get some sleep and prepare for the excitement that lay ahead.

 

Our alarms went off early Thursday morning. We prepared to leave for our game first game against UCC at St. Mary’s University. The game was close but unfortunately we just couldn’t quite keep up and UCC took the W by 10 points.

After the game, we all went up to Sacred Heart High School to get some lunch. We ate quickly so we could make it to Dalhousie University for our school tour with Kate Andrews, a Greenwood Alumni from the class of 2013. Kate took us to the residences at Howe Hall, the Dalplex sports facility and the Killam library. On our tour we saw some other Greenwood Alumni like Emma Heeney and Frances Howlett!

After the tour we had a few hours to rest up for next game against Holy Trinity. We came out strong and beat HTS by nearly thirty points! The win gave us confidence and we felt ready for the next two days that followed.

On Friday we went 1-1 losing by almost 20 points to Selwyn House in the morning; however, we were able to rally and defeat Kings-Edgehill School 61-23! The loss against Selwyn was tough but after beating KES, we found ourselves in a good position to take home the Division 2 championship banner.   

We went back to the hotel and had time to do some homework and chill out before the team Canada FIBA basketball game against the Bahamas at the Scotiabank Centre. Our seats were basically courtside. Every team participating in the CAIS tournament had bought tickets to the game so the atmosphere was very lively and  fun! After the game, we went back to the hotel to prepare for our final day of games.    

Our next game against Stanstead was the semifinals and it was even better than our last one. We came out hot and never cooled down, beating Stansted by nearly fifty points!

We now had some serious momentum and we were going to need to keep it rolling if we wanted to take down our division rival, Trinity College School. The lead was constantly changing and the point gap never got larger than four points. The second half was ours, and near the end of the third quarter we began to run away with the lead. As the game came to a close, we held off Trinity, winning the championship 49-40 and bringing home Greenwood’s first CAIS basketball banner!

We wrapped up an awesome week with a great team dinner at Halifax Sports Bar. The trip was truly amazing and like always, it was the teachers who made it so great. So to Mr. Farbstein, Ms Douglas and Ms Robson, thank you so much for an amazing trip and cheers to a great win!