1996-97 Thunder Bay – uSports women

(1)	Toronto	73
(8)	Lakehead	59	Toronto	60
(4)	Concordia	47	York	64	York	62
(5)	York	70
							—–MANITOBA
(2)	Manitoba	109
(7)	St. F.X.	88	Manitoba	84	Manitoba	73
(3)	Victoria	72	Western	67
(6)	Western	79

In the quarterfinals, held at the Thunderdome in Lakehead, top-seeded Toronto thrashed the 8th-seeded host Lakehead Nor’Westers 73-59. Earlier in the year, Lakehead coach Stu Julius was driving Toronto coach Michelle Belanger through a blizzard when their car skidded into the path of an oncoming truck. Julius swung for the ditch and “saved my life” Belanger said. Julius had flown from Thunder Bay to Toronto and rented a car for the drive north to Sudbury on January 15 for the funeral of Peter Ennis, who’d died of Leukemia at age 50 after having taken the Lady Vees to two national titles and coached the 1996 Canadian Olympic team. Belanger, a native Montrealer and Canadian national team member from 1976-78 who led Toronto the national title in 1896, accompanied Julius on trip and they ran into a storm north of Parry Sound on Highway 69. About 75 clicks from Sudbury, the car skidded out of control. Julius managed to guide it into the ditch, where it landed on its roof in the snow. “You know how they say things can happen in slow motion – well, that’s exactly what it was like,” Julius told Globe. “It was all a blur,” Belanger told the Globe. “I don’t know how he got out of the path of that truck. But when you come from the north you know how to drive on ice.” A passer-by motorist dug them out of the dep snow. OPP drove the pair to a nearby truck stop and then to Sudbury. Neither was injured and they attended the funeral the next day.

The 5th-seeded York Yeomen knocked off the 4th-seeded Concordia Stingers 70-47. The Stingers had beaten the Yeowomen twice during the regular season but couldn’t get untracked on the antique maple hardwood floor at the Thunderdome. Coach Keith Pruden told the Montreal Gazette that he failed to prepare them properly. “The kids wanted to be here. They were ready but if something happens to affect their mental state, their focus, it’s my fault. I’m the person responsible. (True), they have to take a certain amount of responsibility in terms of doing certain things. But I’m supposed to help them with that and I think I must have missed something. And if it kills me, I’ll figure out what it was.” York held Concordia to its lowest offensive output of the season. “It was a game we should have won,” said Stingers forward Guylaine Blanchette. “I think everybody wanted it enough. I don’t think anybody was looking past them because we had beaten them before. I mean, nobody was thinking that winning was just going to come to us, just like that. I don’t know for sure what happened. What I do know is that our defence didn’t make us feeling like we were in control of things out there.” Blanchette paced Concordia with 11 points. York used a late 8-0 run to take a 33-29 lead at the half while the Stingers struggled to get their transition game on track. York extended its lead to 11 early in the second half when Maya Habash drained one of her four treys on the night. She finished with 19 points. Shannon Corey added 18. Pruden said his Stingers lacked defensive intensity “and that was the thing that we did that hurt us the most. We could never really get into our transition game because we just weren’t getting good defensive results. They recovered too many loose balls and got some key offensive rebounds. We shot the ball very poorly. When they were scoring we were tight on the opposite end, missing stuff we’d normally make. York was very well-prepared. They did things a little differently from the two times we played them previously.”

        The 2nd-seeded defending champ Manitoba Bisons rewrote the record book in stomping the 7th-seeded St. Francis Xavier X-Women 109-88 to eclipse the tournament single game scoring mark (previously 96 by Calgary in 1991 and Winnipeg in 1993). “We watched film of (the X-women) from their last two games and that’s all they do: up and down, up and down,” said Bisons coach Coleen Dufresne. “People were looking for a track meet and they got it.” Manitoba shot .580 from the field, hitting 45-78. St. FX shot .560 (36-62). Second team all-Canadian Marjorie Kelly scored 37, while first-team all-Canadian Terri-Lee Johannesson scored 21, had 11 assists and five steals. Catherine Jamieson led ST FX with 27 on 12-13 from the floor. Second-team all-Canadian Theresa MacCuish added 20. The combined 197 points was also the highest combined score in the history of the nationals. MacCuish noted that “we were catching up to them. We were within four in the first half and within six after the first five minutes of the second half and you could just tell that they composed themselves very well and they had a tough attitude. They kept taking it to us. They didn’t crumble at all. I think that was the difference. You could tell them were a championship team. That’s the only way to describe them. They shot 90% from the foul line and pretty much everything they threw up, it went in. It was a tough game. But we never gave up. We were down by 16 at the half and we took it within four. We put a one-two-one on them and they couldn’t adjust. They were fast. We were bigger but they kept up to our fast break. They were medium jump-shooters. They weren’t spectacular from the three-point line but the jump shots they had, they hit everything.”

        In the last quarterfinal, the 6th-seeded wildcard Western Ontario Mustangs stunned the 3rd-seeded Victoria Vikings 79-72 as Jennifer Haylor scored 20 and player of the game Nadia Pezzolo 19. The Mustangs held all-Canadian guard Lisa Koop to a mere eight points using a box-and-one that proved highly effective. Western had ranked number one in the country until the OUA playoffs when they were upset in the finals and forced to rely on a wildcard invitation. Victoria coach Kathy Shields called it a “difficult situation for us and tried to downplay the match to my players before the game. But there can’t be any excuses. You have to play the best team sooner or later and we came close but were too inconsistent to pull it off.” Western led by one with two minutes to play when Victoria guard Lisa Koop brought the ball up the floor and bounced it off her own foot. On the next Viking possession, Megan Dalziel was called for traveling. Those two possessions proved the difference. “We came close to knocking off a very good team,” said Shields. “We’ve usually executed very well at the end of close games to win most of them this season. Today, it just wasn’t our day. They kept Lisa very closely guarded and we tried everything to get her loose but we couldn’t.” Lisa Bright led the Vikes with 18 points while Janet McLaughlin scored 12 and freshman standout Lindsay Brooke 10.

        In the semis, Manitoba whipped Western 84-67 as player of the game Terri-Lee Johannesson scored 28. Manitoba jumped out early and led 51-27 at the half. Anne Smith added 11. Angela Nobes led the Mustangs with 20 points. Manitoba’s full-court press rattled Western and forced 18 first half turnovers. Western pulled to within nine with three minutes to play but ran out of steam. Manitoba coach Coleen Dufresne told the Montreal Gazette that Smith was very effective. “She’s a tremendously versatile player. I use her at all five spots on the floor.” The Bisons took advantage of 32 Western turnovers and 18 Bison steals. “We weren’t able to keep composed and did some things we talked about before the game wrong,” Mustangs captain Angela Nobes told the Western Gazette. “These things caused us to break down.” Terry-lee Johannesson said “physically, we had more talent than Western,” Johannesson said. “That gave us a lot of confidence heading into the game.” Mustangs coach Bob Delaney said “[Terri-Lee] is just one hell of a player and we simply do not match up well with her.”

        In the other semi, the 5th-seeded York Yeomen nipped the top-seeded Toronto Varsity Blues 64-60 as Maya Habash scored 18 and Karen Jackson 15. The teams were tied at 32 at the half. Elizabeth Hart led the Blues with 23 points, including 10 straight in the first half to bring Toronto back from an early 10-point deficit. Toronto, which was 3-0 against York during the season, trailed most of the game. “I thought we were going to do well,” Blues coach Michele Belanger told the Varsity. “We opened up pretty well and then we just kind of fell apart.” The Blues trailed by double-digits in both half but rallied each time before faltering. “We had missed assignments, we were not sharp, we were flat and always found ourselves one step behind,” Belanger said. “We may have been looking ahead to the final. We were arguing with each other on the court and that’s not like our team. There were some good individual performances but we couldn’t get a group of five really working hard together on the court.” Graduating senior Rachel Dei-Amoah said a lack of execution and team effort undid the Blues.

        In the bronze medal match, Western thrashed Toronto 83-69 as all-Canadian Angela Nobes scored 21. “We came up against a very tough team in Manitoba and our confidence was still there,” Angela Nobes told The Varsity. “So we came out [Sunday] and controlled the tempo, controlled the game this time.” Both coaches were whistled for technical and a combined 53 fouls against the players. “Whenever we play Toronto it’s always an emotional game,” said Nadia Pezzolo. “Out of anyone in Ontario, they are probably our No. 1 rivals.” Graduating Mustangs guard Lori Bartolotta said “I’ve had a few tears now that I realize that this is it at the university level. But we came away with a bronze medal and, although it’s not gold, it’s simply a big step for this program.”
        In the final, Terri Lee Johannesson was selected the player of the game as Manitoba defeated York 73-62. Johannesson scored 19 points. She was also named tourney MVP for second year in a row. Johannesson scored 15 of her points in first half, while Marjorie Kelly and Anne Smith were the Bison scoring heroes in the second. Kelly scored 14 and Smith 14, along with 8 boards, 5 assists and 3 steals. Lorissa Crellin and Victoria Neufeld each added 12. Manitoba led 34-30 at the half. All-Canadian Karen Jackson led York with 23. Manitoba jumped into an early lead versus York, as Johannesson scored 15 in the first half and Marjorie Kelly and Anne Smith kept them ahead in the second half. “It definitely feels good to finish my career with a win,” Johannesson told the Montreal Gazette. “We started and weren’t very focused on what we wanted to do but we picked it up in the second half. … You have to be satisfied when you’re able to finish a five-year career with a win. York didn’t make it easy for us, particularly in the first half but we came out more focused in the second and got a lot of scoring from a lot of different people.” Bisons coach Coleen Dufresne noted “I don’t know which is better. Last year’s (championship) was more up for grabs, while in this one, we proved we can win with a balanced attack. … We struggled in the first half so we challenged our team to make better decisions and intensify during halftime. They responded.’’

        The all-tourney team featured: MVP Terri-Lee Johannesson (Manitoba); Karen Jackson (York); Marjorie Kelly (Manitoba); Shannon Carey (York); Elizabeth Hart (Toronto); and Angela Nobes (Western Ontario)

        The bronze medalist Western Mustangs: Angela Nobes; Jennifer Haylor; Cindy Scott; Tenneka Blaauboer; Nadia Pezzolo; Lori Bartolotta

        The silver medalist York Yeowomen: Karen Jackson; Shannon Carey; Maya Habash; coach Bill Pangos

        The champion Manitoba Bisons: Terri-Lee Johannesson; Marjorie Kelly; Anne Smith; Victoria Neufeld; Kyla Koskie; Lorissa Crellin; Glenda Clark; Gabri Macra; Laurie Ann Palmer; Jana Taylor; Diana Dela Cruz; Carla Bodnarus; Treena Moran; Megan Dixon; coach Coleen Dufresne; assistant Mike Hickey; assistant Laurie May; assistant Carol Ploen-Hosegood; therapist Tracy Gordon; therapist Liann Bailey