Owls bring home silver and bronze from NORWOSSAs

Ken Johnston
Editor

Hearts were broken late last week but lost love was not the culprit as four Rainy River High School Owls teams battled for NORWOSSA gold.
The week started off with the Mixed Curling team travelling to Kenora to compete in NORWOSSAs. The team, skipped by Giselle Bonot made it all the way to the gold medal round and lost by one rock against the Dryden Eagles. That put them in a tie for second with Atikokan.
A shootout was conducted after the first games of the tournament and Atikokan supposedly won that. But Coach Cathy Seguin said that they heard after they returned home that the Owls were called up for Silver medal presentation but had left already. “We have not seen the medals yet.” said Seguin.
If that is not true they finished in third overall in NORWOSSAs.
Three court teams, Jr. and Sr. Boys basketball and Jr. Girls Volleyball travelled to Sioux Lookout for NORWOSSA’s late last week.
The Jr. Boys Owls were ranked 1st in the league, but only by a narrow margin over the team that they met in the NORWOSSA finals on Friday. The Sioux Lookout Warriors and the Owls traded almost even victories in regular season play and RRHS coach John Laplante knew it was going to be a tough battle, especially in the Warrior’s home court.
“We had a good game plan and we stuck to it,” said Laplante. They planned to try and get the Warriors 6’7” player to foul out and they did just that in the third quarter. Then it was up to the Owls top scorers to generate a lead, which they had for part of the game. Then key player, Shane Ikert, twisted his ankle.
Laplante was a little worried but figured that his other big gun, Joel Ashworth to step up and fill Ikert’s shoes. Well he did just that until the unthinkable happened to him. He sprained his ankle to.
“Defensively the guys played good but we just weren’t scoring the points,” explained Laplante. “The kids played a great game plan. We just did not count on being injured.”
The Owls lost 42-35 and brought home silver medals.
In the Junior Girls Volleyball it was very close. The Owls lost to Kenora’s Thomas Aquinas Saints in the semi-finals but only by a very narrow margin. They lost in the fourth game by 28-26 and overall only lost all their matches by a total of six points.
The Sr. Boys also lost to the Saints in the semi-finals 60-43. Coach Tom Shumaker said that the Owls played well, but were outplayed by the Saints who ended up losing to Sioux Lookout in the finals by 2 points.
While none of the teams advanced to NWOSSAs all did well and coaches seemed to be in agreement that they were pleased with their respective teams’ performances.