Storm too much for Irish
Will Benko emptied his tank Thursday in an effort to extend his high school hoops career.
The 17-year-old, Grade 12 student netted 12 points but it wasn’t enough as the Notre Dame Fighting Irish dropped an 86-65 decision to the Saltfeet Storm in the Southern Ontario Secondary Schools Association (SOSSA) AAA boys basketball championship final at Eden.
Benko’s final few minutes as a member of the Irish were painful as he and his teammates watched the Storm being presented with their SOSSA medals.
“It hurts a lot,” Benko said. “We played these guys last year in the finals and fell short. This time we fell short again so it’s definitely tough but I believe we have a good group of guys that are going to come back and do it next season.”
Benko, one of the few who will be lost graduation, is going to miss his Notre Dame teammates.
“The whole team is hard work,” he said. “It was fun to come to practice every day and kind of experience that. We’ve done things that we never did from last season. We won the Trib (Welland Tribune) this year, so that was a very important thing.
“They’re a special group of guys that I was happy to run with.”
Notre Dame assistant coach Matt Helmkay was effusive in his praise of Benko.
“He meant a lot,” Helmkay said. “He was a glue to this team and whatever we ever asked of him, it was without question. He’s a class A athlete, he’s a class A student and he’s the most coachable kid I’ve ever coached.”
The Storm jumped out to a 26-11 lead after one quarter and led 49-32 at the half.
“They had a lot of height on us and they were able to shoot the ball really well, so I feel like we just weren’t able to close out on shooters fast enough and they punished us for it,” Benko said.
Helmkay tipped his cap to the Storm.
“At the end of the day, they just shot better than we did,” he said. “We tried to adjust to their shooting with different defences and they were able to adjust as well with their shooters and we weren’t able to close out. At the end of the day we weren’t able to adapt.”
Anmol Sidho paced the Storm with 37 points.
Trent Groulx added 20 and Aiden Lucchetta 15 for the Irish.
The Irish topped the West Niagara Wolfpack 69-56 in the morning semifinal.
Lucchetta had 20, Groulx 18 and Benko 12.
Parker Weston-Thwaites had 17, Ben Unrau 13 and Julian Sobota 12 for the Wolfpack.
“This morning was a good game,” Benko said. “We came out with a lot of intensity in the first half, so we were hoping that would translate into the second game, which didn’t really happen.”
Irish assistant coach Roe Roman said the club played well versus the Wolfpack.
“We moved the ball very well as a team and that was part of our game plan,” Roman said. “We knew that they were kind of like a wild card because they play very hard and they lose some of the games and they win some of the games.
“We had everything to lose for this and they didn’t have anything to lose. So we took it hard at them. They played very hard and we just executed our plays a little bit better than they did.”
The Storm topped the A.N. Myer Marauders 74-55 in the other semifinal.
Isaiah Cosaro-Oteng had 18, Ryker Cain 10, Tanner Smith and Noah Walters eight each for Myer.
Sidho paced Saltfleet with 18 points.
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