Flyers complete first step

The Eden Flyers senior boys basketball team punched its ticket to the Southern Ontario Secondary Schools Association AAA championships Thursday with an impressive 91-50 victory over the visiting West Niagara Wolfpack in the Niagara Region High School Athletic Association Zone 4 championship game.

“It was a tough game,” West Niagara head coach Steve Huisman said. “It was a big challenge facing these guys. They are well coached, Eden is well prepared and we tried our best and hustled as hard as we can. They have too much talent this year, they are very strong and I think they are going to do very well at SOSSA.”

Eden head coach Jonathan Thorpe was happy with the win.

“It is obviously nice to win zone and it’s always nice to win a championship but this is only Step 1 in a process that we have in our heads and we are setting goals for,” he said. “It’s obviously nice because you don’t win zone every day but it really is just the first step for us.”

After a bit of a hiccup, Thorpe likes how his team is trending heading into SOSSA.

“After the Tribune, we sort of lulled for a little while and it was completely understandable considering the emotion of that win. We didn’t get our energy back up to that level in the last three games in particular but we had the exam break and whatnot. It was tough on the guys but we had a really good week of practice and I think it showed today particularly in the first half.”

The Flyers jumped out to an early 25-3 lead and never looked back.

“It showed that they were ready and we were back to having things clicking.”

Last season, Eden made it to the quarter-finals of the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations AAA championships but this year’s team is much different.

“Obviously last year was an awesome team and I think we probably relied on the high-end talent a lot and some of the other guys maybe didn’t get the touches that they are getting this year,” Thorpe said. “This year with our starting five, anybody can have a 20-plus game for us, everybody is touching the ball and it moves a lot better than it did last year. That’s not to say anything bad about last year — we made it to OFSAA — but it is a different style of play. Last year, our top guys took 80 per cent of our shots and this year it is really spread out.”

On the other side of the floor, Huisman likes how the Wolfpack program is progressing in it second year of existence.

“It is doing very well and I am happy with how it is coming along. Our juniors are undefeated, the youth coming up are good and we are building a good program. There are 1,600 students at our school and we have very large programs for all of our sports. We’re coming.”

STATS PACK

Flyers 91 Wolfpack 50

Cat’s Caboose Player of the Game: Eden’s Chad Thorpe with 24 points.

For the Eden Flyers: Chad Thorpe 24; Kai Schatz 18; Dylan Durlov 12; Luke Midgley 11; Luke Johnson 11; Ty Klassen 4; Josh Sanecki 4; Brandon Falk 3; Brock Watson 2; Dominic Olesin 2.

For the West Niagara Wolfpack: Julian Sobota 17; Ben Spittal 10; Ben Unrau 9; Aiden Taggart 7; Brodie Heidekamp 3; Andrej Kovacevic 2; Ryan Love 2.

Up next: Eden advances to the SOSSA AAA championships next Friday at Saltfleet.