We’ve gone final from Day 3 of the 2025 B.C. girls high school basketball championships with complete reports from today’s two semifinals.
NO. 1 HOLY CROSS 81 NO. 4 ST. THOMAS MORE 73
By GARY KINGSTON (Special for Varsity Letters)
LANGLEY – The Holy Cross Crusaders senior girls basketball team will run opponents dizzy with their speed. And they’ll get rebounding and scoring from everyone, although their big two combo of Solene Jackson and Isla Iannuzzi can take over games at times.
It’s a formula that carried the Surrey school to the No. 1 Double A seed at the provincial high school championships.
And despite some scary moments late against the undersized but scrappy St. Thomas More Knights in a Friday semifinal, the Crusaders have made it to the championship final where the goal is a first provincial title since 2013.
“My heart is really beating,” said head coach Amy Beauchamp after an 81-73 victory. “It was intense. But I knew it was going to be a hard-fought game. STM is a really fiesty, talented group.”
Not feisty enough to pull off the upset, but talented enough to give the Crusaders a battle that showed Holy Cross has some mettle to its game.
Things got a little dicey in the fourth quarter when Holy Cross seemingly forgot how to play defence, but the Crusaders steadied in time as their Captain Clutch, Grade 11 guard Iannuzzi kept the Knights at bay by hitting six of eight free throws in the final two minutes.
The Crusaders led by 23 at the half and by a seemingly safe 32 late in the third before they forgot how to make stops and the offence decided it was siesta time.
“We ran into foul trouble and then, honestly, we stopped playing defence,” said Beauchamp. “It was like we didn’t even know how to play defence and we let them back into the game. But we were able to gather our composure and finish it off.”
A 22-9 STM run closed the margin to eight points late and then clutch three-pointers from guards Lauren Wong and Mia Belliveau in the final minute cut the Crusaders’ lead to five at 78-73. But the composed Iannuzzi did her thing from the charity stripe to salt the game away.
“She’s our leader, our floor leader,” said Beauchamp. “She keeps us all in line, knows exactly what’s going on. When things go crazy, she keeps everyone calm.”
Iannuzzi finished with 23 points, while the six-foot Jackson had a tidy 25 points, many of them on barely contested layups inside, and 11 rebounds.
“I’m more of an outside three guard,” said Jackson of her all-round game. “But we don’t have a lot of height on our team and STM’s not big, so I had to go inside and try to get easy buckets.”
Jackson said making it to the final game of the tournament was a goal, but there’s still work to be done.
“We have to finish it,’’ she said, adding that the formula is pretty simple.
“We just have to be more aggressive, score more, rebound more, do all the basic things that lead to winning.”
They’re almost certainly going to face St. Michaels University School in the final – the Blue Jags had a commanding lead late in the third quarter of their semifinal against Britannia – but based on regular-season results that one could be a toss-up.
St. Michaels won the first meeting by 20 points, but Holy Cross took the second by 25.
NO. 2 ST. MICHAELS UNIVERSITY 58 NO. 6 BRITANNIA 22
By GARY KINGSTON (Special for Varsity Letters)
LANGLEY – Twice a frustrated bridesmaid at the Triple A tier over the previous two B.C. high school basketball seasons, the St. Michaels University Blue Jags are hoping a Double A final on Saturday can be a case of third time lucky.
Although the senior girls squad from Victoria struggled shooting at times Friday evening for the second game in a row, the No. 2 seed Blue Jags rippled twine enough late to secure a 55-22 win over the plucky Britannia Bruins.
That sets up a championship final in the Langley Events Centre Arena Bowl – the first time the girls’ title games will have been played on that temporary hardcourt – against the No. 1 seed Holy Cross Crusaders.
“I don’t know if it (the offence) ever really got untracked,” St, Michael’s head coach Lindsay Brooke said of the 34 per cent shooting from the floor against the Bruins.
“They went zone after the first quarter (when the Jags took a 22-6 lead) and we didn’t shoot the ball well. We didn’t shoot the ball well yesterday either.”
So, that’s got to scare a head coach a little heading into the final.
“Sure it does,” said Brooke. “Fifty-five points, it’s going to be tough to win with 55 points. (Holy Cross) is a very good team, deadly in transition and they have some really highly-skilled players.”
So do the Jags. But scoring leader Avery Geddes couldn’t find her stroke for much of the game before finally connecting on a pair of three-pointers late to finish with 12 points, sharing the team high with fellow guard Charlie Anderson and forward Olivia Pickering.
“We just took a while to get in the groove,” said Anderson, part of the Grade 12 leadership group along with Geddes and Pickering. “Hopefully we find that and are able to do that (against Holy Cross).”
The Blue Jags lost last year’s Triple A final to Brookswood, 69-63 in overtime, and fell 67-64 the previous year to Abbotsford.
Before that brief jump to the second highest tier, St. Michaels had been a frequent fixture in the Double A championship. But the senior girls squad at the school has yet to put its name on the championship trophy.
“It’s really nerve-racking (to be in a third consecutive final) because in our Grade 12 year we really want to finish it off with a win,” said Anderson. “But we’ve been here before and we understand the stage, the pressure and know how to perform under that. Hopefully we can pull it out this year.”
Anderson says she and her teammates have learned a lot from the agonizingly close losses the last two years.
“You have to have the mind of a goldfish, just really get over the last play. It’s hard sometimes and I struggle with that, but the game doesn’t depend on one moment, one point. And you have to keep pushing, keep working hard the whole game.”
Brooke laughed when asked what she thought her girls had learned from the heartbreaking defeats at the Triple A level.
“Oh my goodness. I think they’re just hungry. The Grade 12s have been (at provincials) for several years now and they’ve played in big games, played in tight games. They’ve got that experience.”
Britannia shot just 16 per cent from the field, with no player reaching double digits in scoring. Bianca Padolina was the top scorer with six.
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