Redcoats rally past Eagles
Governor Simcoe 12B student Matteo Martin-Hendsbee is a key cog on the Redcoats senior boys basketball team.
“I lean on him a lot,” said Simcoe head coach John Ingribelli, after the visiting Redcoats escaped with a 51-39 victory Monday over the Grimsby Eagles in Niagara Region High School Athletic Association play.
“He knows the game and I consider him a team leader. I can bounce ideas off of Matteo and he’s very level headed.”
The 18-year-old takes his role as a leader seriously.
“As a leader, I hype our team up, put them in position and get them ready for games.”
Martin-Hendsbee also works on the attitudes of his teammates.
“It’s not good to have a negative attitude Just as you saw in the second half, we had a better attitude and it helped us come back and win the game.”
He enjoys being a sounding board for Ingribelli.
‘He has been coaching girls and he is a newer coach to our Simcoe team,” Martin-Hendsbee said. “I have been teaching him the plays that we used to do in Grade 11.”
He is looking forward to his final year of high school.
“I wasn’t really prepared for university so I went back to school and sports is a plus because we didn’t get to have it in our Grade 12 year.”
Martin-Hendsbee also played on the school’s football team that made it to the Tier 2 championship game.
He is confident the Redcoats can do some damage this season on the basketball court.
“I like that we can recognize when we are in the wrong and we can reflect and get back to business. I want to lead this team to SOSSA (Southern Ontario Secondary Schools Association championships) and try to get to OFSAA (Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations championships).
The former Pelham Panthers travel player is likely in his last year of his competitive basketball career and he is making every moment count.
“I will miss this atmosphere. It’s kind of cool that we have fans again.”
Ingribelli saw his team played two different halves Monday.
“In the first half, we played selfish basketball,” he said. “We were alternating guys in and out and they were questioning why they were coming out. I literally had to go to the change room and ream them out and tell them it was not about themselves. It was about the team. I told them if they were going to start arguing with the coach why they were coming off, don’t bother asking because I won’t put you back in.”
After coaching girls basketball for a number years, Ingribelli is having to adjust to coaching male players.
“Girls listen. Boys think they know the game and how I describe the boys is all show and no go.”
That being said, he does like the team he is coaching.
“We have a good group of kids but I have to prepare more mentally than physically to coach them.”
The Eagles, who opened their season last week with an 84-28 home loss to Eden, led the Redcoats by double digits and held the lead until the fourth quarter before running out of gas.
“We started out really strong and came out with high intensity and over the course of the game we lost our way and got too tired to play the high-intensity defence that we are used to,” Grimsby head coach Michael Hube said. “That is probably where we went wrong.”
It also didn’t help that Eagles missed a bunch of contested and uncontested layups.
“We are going to have to go back to doing a layup practice eventually,” he said. “These kids are a lot more talented than they showed in the last two quarters.”
Despite opening the season with a pair of losses, Hube likes his roster.
“We have really good athleticism and we have lots of talent, but the conditioning is a bit lacking at the moment.”
STATS PACK
Redcoats 51 Eagles 39
Cat’s Caboose Player of the Game: Simcoe’s Kambri Watson with 14 points.
For the Governor Simcoe Redcoats: Watson 14; Reza Changizian 12; Maddox Harrison 12; Matteo Martin-Hendsbee 5; Robert Muir 4; Jacob Reynen 4.
For the Grimsby Eagles: Tyler Foster 14; Zander Culic 7; Ryland Mullings 6; Zack Strongitharm 6; Yash Chahal 4; Kabeer Phull 2.
Up next: Simcoe hosts Myer Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. and Grimsby hosts Greater Fort Erie Tuesday at 5 p.m.
