It was an exceptional week across SMUS Athletics, with major achievements at every level. Squash athletes collected 18 medals at the Shawnigan Junior Silver 2 Tournament and four players now set to compete on the national stage. On the courts, Senior, Junior, and Grade 9 basketball teams posted strong league wins and impressive tournament results, while Middle School teams capped their seasons with an extraordinary four Lower Island championship titles.
Rugby
Five members of the SMUS Senior Boys Rugby team helped the Castaway Wanderers capture the BC U18 Championship on Sunday in Langley.
Desmond Grant, Sebastien Allard, Declan Longridge, Santiago Flores La Salvia, and Nicholas Lee were members of the winning team. Castaway Wanderers beat UBCOB Ravens 31-15 in the final under challenging weather conditions at Willoughby Stadium.
Squash
Four SMUS Squash team athletes are headed to the Canadian Junior Open this week in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
Max Arndt, Kieran MacKay, Mila Lampa, and Carys Van Alphen will compete in the national event, which runs from this coming Saturday to Dec. 16.
Arndt is also set to play in the U.S. Jr. Open, Dec. 20-23 in Philadelphia. SMUS teammate Anderson Brown will compete in the British Junior Open, Jan. 2-6 in Birmingham, England.
Meanwhile, over the past weekend, the SMUS Squash team picked up 18 medals – including four gold – at the Shawnigan Junior Silver 2 Tournament.
Forty-six SMUS athletes, from the Junior, Middle, and Senior Schools, competed in the tournament on Friday and Saturday at Shawnigan Lake School.
Taking gold for SMUS were Maxi den Boer (Tier 6), Woody Carswell (Tier 8), Sion Hsieh (Tier 9) and Rayna Wu (Tier 10).
Blue Jag athletes finishing second included Etienne Denux (Tier 3), Princeton Aubertin (Tier 5), Kathryn Chen (Tier 6), Noah Jun (Tier 8), Owen Kondra (Tier 9), and Katie Liu (Tier 10).
Taking third-place honours were Keith Alexander (Tier 1), Shaan Arneja (Tier 4), Jacob Ji (Tier 5), August Belke (Tier 6), Jianuo Wu (Tier 7), Manu Monroy (Tier 8), Ismail Laghari (Tier 9), and Devon Bagga (Tier 10).
Senior Girls Basketball
The SMUS Senior Girls Basketball team didn’t get the kind of start to its season that Head Coach Lindsay Brooke was hoping for, but the Blue Jags turned things around by the end of this past weekend.
SMUS won the consolation side of the Victoria Christmas Tip-off Tournament on Saturday, closing the highly competitive event with two wins. The Blue Jags beat Bishop Carroll High School of Calgary 61-39 in their final game, getting 22 points and 16 rebounds from Elspeth Rodger and 19 points and 21 rebounds from Mikaela Dubé.
On Friday evening, SMUS downed Pacific Christian 58-20. Dubé finished with 18 points and 11 rebounds, Rodger added 13 points and 12 boards, and Caitlyn Chen chipped in with 11 points and six boards.
In their opening game of the tournament on Friday, the Blue Jags jumped out to an early 19-3 lead but eventually surrendered that edge in a frustrating 44-41 loss to Courtenay’s Mark Isfeld, a team expected to be among SMUS’s AAA rivals on Vancouver Island this season. Dubé finished with 12 points and nine rebounds, Rodger added 10 points and 15 boards, and Indigo Edgington chipped in with seven points and 10 steals. Unfortunately, the Blue Jags also finished with 28 turnovers of their own – too many to concede against a top team.
The Blue Jags tipped off their season with a 56-48 Lower Island Division 1 loss at Oak Bay on Tuesday. Mya Beare scored 14 points and grabbed seven rebounds for SMUS in the loss. Dubé added 13 points and 16 boards, and Crystal Cai had eight points for the Jags.
The Blue Jags will host Belmont in a Division 1 league game this Tuesday in the Single Gym, beginning at 5:45 pm.
SMUS will also play in the high-profile Tsumura Basketball Invitational tournament this week. The Blue Jags begin the 16-team draw with a matchup against Charles Best Secondary of Coquitlam on Wednesday at Centre Court of the Langley Events Centre beginning at 6:15 pm. All games in the tournament will be livestreamed on tfse.tv.
Senior Boys Basketball
It was a relatively quiet week for the SMUS Senior Boys Basketball team, but the Blue Jags recorded an important Lower Island AA league victory in their only game action.
SMUS outlasted St. Andrew’s 78-70 on the road last Wednesday night. Senior guard Dani Pelyhe led the way with 23 points in the victory. Junior call-ups Alex MacKay, with 18 points, and William Low, with 15, also figured among the leading scorers, as did Grade 12 Will Bateson with 13.
The Blue Jags have a big week ahead, with a key league matchup at home on Tuesday against Pacific Christian – a team that figures to be one of the top Lower Island and Island AA challengers this year. That game tips off in the Single Gym at 7:30 pm.
SMUS will hit the road two days later for North Vancouver, where the squad will compete in the prestigious 16-team No Regrets Tournament. The Blue Jags will meet St. George’s of Vancouver in a first-round game on Thursday at Carson Graham beginning at 3:45 pm.
Junior Girls Basketball
The SMUS Junior Girls Basketball team finished third in the Victoria Christmas Tip-off Tournament Junior draw on Saturday with a 42-39 win over Argyle at Belmont. Piper Geddes and Ali Brooks scored 10 points each in the victory while Natalie DiFelice-Oinonen had nine.
The Junior Jags fell 50-47 to Brookswood in a hard-fought semifinal played earlier Saturday. Geddes led the way in that game with 16 points while DiFelice-Oinonen added eight.
The Junior Girls beat Spectrum 55-35 in their tournament opener on Friday. Geddes scored 20 points to lead the Jags while Ella Buckley added 12.
The SMUS Juniors will see Lower Island Division 1 league action on Tuesday at Lambrick Park, beginning at 4:15 pm.
The Junior Jags will also take part in this weekend’s Charles Best tournament in Coquitlam, opening against Sardis on Friday in a 5 pm tip-off.
Meanwhile, the Junior ‘B’ Girls have jumped out to a 2-0 start in their Lower Island Division 2 season. The Jags beat Glenlyon Norfolk 38-20 last Monday and followed that up with a 50-23 victory over visiting Esquimalt on Thursday. The Junior Bs will play another league game this Monday at Edward Milne, beginning at 4:15 pm.
Junior Boys Basketball
The SMUS Junior Boys enjoyed a solid second week of the young basketball season, winning an important league game and then placing third in the 10-team Independent Schools Athletic Association (ISAA) tournament over the weekend at Brentwood College.
The Junior Jags had little trouble dispatching host Spectrum 74-43 on Tuesday to run their Lower Island Division record to 2-0. Point guard Manav Kang led the way with 20 points in the win while forward William Low added 14, swingman Evan Pressello 10, and forward Will Hamilton seven.
The Blue Jags opened the ISAA tournament with a 75-57 win over BC’s third-ranked Mulgrave Titans on Friday. Guard Alex MacKay was named player of the game for the SMUS Juniors as he scored 28 points and played solid defence on Mulgrave’s top scorer. Kang added 19 points in the victory while Low and Matt Nacey each had 14.
That put the Blue Jags into a late Friday tournament semifinal, where they eventually fell 75-73 to St. George’s in a hard-fought game. MacKay scored 19 points in the close loss while Nacy added 16, Kang had 15, and Pressello 12. SMUS trailed by 12 points early in the game, but battled back to tie it at the break and take a number of second-half leads. In a back-and-forth final period, the Blue Jags had two shots to win it in the final 20 seconds.
In Saturday’s third-place game, SMUS got out to an early lead en route to a convincing 77-56 decision over Collingwood as everyone on the Jags’ bench saw action. MacKay again led SMUS with 19 points while Low added 13 and Kang and Nacey had 11 each.
Kang earned player of the game honours in the third-place contest. Nacey controlled the boards for the Blue Jags and finished with a total of 52 rebounds over the three games of the tournament.
The Junior Jags will travel to Belmont for a big league game this Thursday, beginning at 5:45 pm.
Grade 9 Boys Basketball
The SMUS Grade 9 Boys Basketball team began its season with a 77-20 win over visiting Glenlyon Norfolk School in a Lower Island Junior Boys Division 2 matchup on Thursday. The Grade 9s got 19 points from Seb Divoky, 15 from Jerome Chan, and 10 from Danny Perrins in the win.
The Grade 9s then put in an impressive performance at the ISAA Tournament over the weekend at Brentwood. Playing against mostly Grade 10 competition, the Jags won two of their three games in the 10-team event.
SMUS fell 81-40 to the host and eventual tournament champion Brentwood Junior team in its opener. But the Grade 9 Jags bounced back to beat the Shawnigan Juniors 76-45. In their third game, the Blue Jags defeated Mulgrave Juniors 64-51.
The Grade 9s will play a pair of Division 2 road games this week – travelling to Mount Douglas on Monday and Claremont on Thursday. Both games tip off at 4:15 pm.
Middle School Basketball
It was quite a week for SMUS Middle School Basketball teams as they swept to four of the five Lower Island competitive championships that were up for grabs in the final week of the playoffs.
SMUS played host to a championship final tripleheader last Tuesday. The Grade 7 Girls started things off with a 39-10 win over PCS in their league title game. Thea Picardi of SMUS led all scorers in the final.
That was followed up nicely by both the SMUS Grade 6 and Grade 7 Boys teams also capturing Lower Island championships with wins over visiting teams from Arbutus.
The Blue Jags beat Arbutus 33-25 in the Grade 6 Boys final. In the Grade 7 Boys championship game, SMUS defeated Arbutus 69-61.
All three of the SMUS championship teams crowned at home on Tuesday finished their seasons with perfect records over both the regular season and playoffs.
On Wednesday, the SMUS Grade 8 Boys capped off a tremendous hoops week for the Middle School by capturing their Lower Island title. The Blue Jags put in a solid team effort to beat the host Monterey Storm 67-53 in a well-played final before a large crowd. Jacob Yao scored 22 points to lead SMUS offensively while Ian Wilmott had 15, Jackson Brambley 14, and Marcus Liberatore 10.
The Blue Jags were missing star forward Austen Watts, who couldn’t play in the final due to illness, but his teammates rallied and the entire bench supplied great minutes as the Jags hit 11 threes in total to build their lead. They also got terrific pressure defence from their guards, while forward Hugo Danzo-Dvorak anchored the team defensively inside and, along with Liberatore, controlled the boards.
It was the second straight road playoff victory for the Grade 8 Jags, who beat host Spencer 66-61 in a semifinal Monday. Yao led the Jags with 30 points, including four clutch free throws in the fourth quarter, while Danzo-Dvorak added 20 in the win and Watts had an outstanding game defensively and on the boards.
The Grade 8 Boys finished the season with a 10-1 overall record, with the finals victory over Monterey avenging their only loss – a two-point decision to the same Storm on the road in the regular season.
Max Arndt playing squash
Grade 6 basketball champions
Grade 7 basketball champions
Grade 8 basketball champions
Grade 9 boys basketball at ISAAs
Junior Boys Basketball at ISAAs
