Thunder advance to Zone 4 AAA hoops final
Practice wasn’t a fun place to be the day after the Blessed Trinity Thunder senior girls basketball team lost 50-44 to the Denis Morris Reds in Niagara Catholic Athletic Association league play.
The Thunder’s lone regular-season loss on Oct. 18 saw BT head coach John DiPasquale put his charges through suicide drills in practice as a reminder that he was not impressed with their performance.
“It’s old school, for real,” DiPasquale said Tuesday, after his team thumped the visiting Reds 78-24 in a game to determine which NCAA school would play the Niagara Region High School Athletic Association representative in the Zone 4 AAA final.
“These kids have been through a lot and we have six Grade 12s and we want to finish strong.”
One of those Grade 12s is DiPasquale’s 17-year-old daughter Mia. Mia was a force Tuesday with 15 points and close to double digits in assists.
“She’s great. She is always playing with a smile on her face because she plays for her dad, and in soccer too,” John said, with a laugh. “This is good for her because this group of kids has been together for a long, long time.”
Mia is as much a distributor as she is a scorer.
“She gets a lot of assists and she sets the tempo for the game,” John said. “You really saw the value of her when we were playing Churchill in the Standard semifinals. When she wasn’t in the game, we weren’t the same.”
Mia is in her Grade 12 year and has no plans to take a victory lap. Knowing it’s her last high school season has her extra motivated.
“We have never made it to OFSAA (Ontario Federation of School Athletic Association championship) and my sister made it for soccer,” the guard said. “I heard about the experience and I want to experience it myself.
“I obviously love my team and to experience it with them would make it that much better. I have been playing with a lot of them since Grade 9.”
Mia is happy to do whatever is needed of her on the floor.
“I like to score, but I am also one of the vets on the team so I need to provide leadership and tell my teammates that it goes really fast and you only get this experience once.
“You have to take advantage of it.”
Mia has 10 quick points in the first quarter and then went cold from the floor until adding five points in the final eight minutes of the game.
“You have to really slow the game down in your head and if it’s not there, don’t force it,” she said. “You have to remember to play as a team and it will eventually come.”
As for playing for her father, she admits it can get a little intense at times.
“It’s really good,” she said. “We try to keep sports on the court and the home life at home.”
Like every child who has a parent as their coach, Mia has heard the speech about sometimes her father is talking as her coach and sometimes he is talking as her parent.
“In the car rides home, he addresses me as my father/coach,” she said, with a smile.
After the game, Denis Morris head coach Stefanie DeMizio congratulated her team on a successful season, excluding Tuesday’s game.
“Our best player (Lexxus Bell) got two fouls in the first eight seconds of the game and the game was pretty much over.”
With Bell out the lineup, the Thunder rolled to a 30-5 advantage by the end of the first quarter.
“Without her, we are in trouble,” DeMizio said. “We can’t break the press. They (BT) knew it and I think our girls knew it too and it set the tone for the rest of the game.”
The Reds rely on Bell to defend, score, distribute the ball and take charge
“She controls the floor, she’s very talkative and she’s a good leader out there,” DeMizio said. “The girls rely on her to set the pace and the tone of the game.”
The Reds won the consolation titles at the Standard and Tribune tournaments and DM was the only team to defeat Blessed Trinity in NCAA league play.
“We had a great year and I am very happy with how our season went,” DeMizio said. “We have had some good success and we are a young team made up of Grade 10s and 11s.
“Hopefully we can build on that for next year.”
John DiPasquale described Denis Morris as a nice team that is well-coached.
“The way I looked at is if we neutralized her (Bell), we had a good chance,” he said. “She destroyed us last time.”
The Thunder hadn’t play a game since Oct. 23, but didn’t look rusty Tuesday.
“They were sharp,” DiPasquale said, adding that sharpness comes from 13 players attending practice every day.
STATS PACK
Thunder 78 Reds 24
Mick and Angelo’s Johnny Rocco’s Player of the Game: Blessed Trinity’s Mia DiPasquale with 15 points and a great game distributing the ball.
For the Blessed Trinity Thunder: Lexia Poitras 16; DiPasquale 15; Ella Muraca 14; Maddie O’Brien 10; Olivia Iannotta 7; Kaelin Sutor 7; Makayla Giddings 3; Katrina Shields 2; Kayla Staios 2; Alexandra Phillips 2.
For the Denis Morris Reds: Cayla Mirabella 9; Jordyn Britton 7; Lexxus Bell 6; Rayshell Nyamekye 2.
