No. 3 LANGLEY CHRISTIAN 75 No. 1 MULGRAVE 69
By Howard Tsumura
LANGLEY — Somehow, somewhere amidst the sea of Langley Christian players, parents and most of all fans, the latter of whom just a minute or two prior had stormed the court at the Langley Events Centre, Lightning coach Danielle Gardner found a tiny sliver of space to call her own.
It would be a personal haven for no more than a few seconds and was glimpsed by just one photographer.
And in it, a coach could give us no more revealing a self-portrait of the joy that so suddenly fills us when, without warning, the significance of a moment becomes a singular flood awash with gratitude.
“It’s probably one of my most enjoyable championships because I enjoyed the game,” said Gardner, moments after her team put together the kind of game-closing stretch whose perfection can never be planned for… only worked for.
“And that is what I really stressed,” she continued of the No. 3-seeded Lightning’s 75-69 win over West Vancouver’s No. 1 Mulgrave Titans in the B.C. Double-A championship final, played before a capacity crowd on Saturday afternoon at the Langley Events Centre. “I said to my players ‘Hey, enjoy it… find the joy in every moment, whether we win or lose.’ If we’ve gotten to this point, let’s have fun. And it was just joyous.”
The B.C. title, Langley Christian’s fourth overall, all under the tutelage of Gardner, was the program’s second in the past three seasons, third overall against Mulgrave, and was won on the backs of a complete team effort, all of whom seemed bookended by a senior tournament MVP and a blossoming Grade 9 star forward/post.
At one end was Colette Van der Hoven, a 5-foot-10 senior guard who came to epitomize the team’s ability to turn its defensive intensity into fast-breaking transition offence, was selected tournament MVP after scoring 14 of her team-high 25 points in the fourth quarter.
And at the other, Gabrielle Vis, a 6-0 foot Grade 9 forward, who is just now scratching the surface of her enormous skill-set as mobile and instinctive player with shot-changing and rim-protecting ability, shone beyond her years by the providing the kind of paint protection her team would not have won without. She finished the game with 14 points and five blocked shots.
You can also add Grace Bradshaw, the 5-foot-8 senior guard who capped off a final high school season with full health following an extended rehabilitation from an ACL injury. She turned in as important a 13-point resume as is possible in a championship game, and Grade 10 guard Payton Brunoro who sparked the team early and finished with 19points. The rest of a seven-player rotation which included Shayla Black, Georgia Van de Waarde and Zoe Bradshaw, and in the end, everyone pitched in to get the job done.
“I am still in shock to be honest,” Gardner said after Langley Christian faced a Mulgrave team led a trio of star seniors. “I knew we could win but to actually do it is another thing and Mulgrave is a fantastic team. Eva is so tough to stop and my Grade 9 (Vis) battled her hard today.”
Eva, of course, is the 6-foot-2 super-talent Eva Ruse, the NCAA Div. 1 signee who next season will suit up at the University of San Diego.
Clearly the focal point of the team, and playing in the absence of her injured teammate Ava Wilson, a 6-foot guard who lost her senior season to a knee injury, Ruse was the clear pivot point to everything the Titans did on Saturday.
Yet despite her 33-point, 13-rebound performance, and that of the 17 points of 5-foot-11 point guard Jenna Talib, Mulgrave was not able to fully match the intensity of Langley Christian.
And in the end, in what was still a one-possession game heading into the contest’s final minute, it took near perfection in all facets of the game by the Lightning over the stretch drive to pull out the victory.
On Saturday, it was all of that, plus the sum total of a whole season chalk full of team moments which had quite suddenly welled to the surface.
And that’s because coaches love their ‘kids’.
A PERFECT FOURTH QUARTER?
The Mulgrave Titans showed enough resolve over the middle stages of Saturday’s contest to suggest that their best was still waiting to come as the fourth-quarter stretch drive was just underway.
It was late in the second quarter when the Lightning unleashed a trio of threes on the Titans, taking a 39-24 lead with a 9-0 run behind two three-pointers from Bradshaw and another from Van der Hoven, all in span of just over two minutes. Vis even went up and blocked Ruse at the basket with under a second remaining in the first half, sending a statement to the defending champions that a repeat title wasn’t going to come without a huge fight.
Yet Ruse’s 12-point third quarter was the thrust behind a Mulgrave uprising, and early in the fourth quarter, the favourites had flipped the game on it’s ear by taking a 58-53 lead.
It was a full 20-point swing, an arc which seemed to have developed the kind of momentum not easily affected.
“Once Mulgrave got that lead, was that going to be the beginning of the end for (Langley Christian),” said broadcast analyst Cheryl Jean-Paul on the TFSETV.ca live stream.
“But then came the pushback, and it was extraordinary.”
Truer words could not have been said.
Ruse, soon after, picked up her fourth foul of the game and sat for two minutes of clock time. Over her brief absence, the Lightning defence found it could generate turnovers with much greater ease, and twice in 31 seconds, Van der Hoven was speeding down the court for fast-break layins.
And when Ruse came back in, it was absolutely understandable that she had to temper her game, because other than Talib’s seven points in the final frame, no other Mulgrave player other than Ruse was able to score.
And that’s when everything that wound up setting Langley Christian apart from the rest of the tournament field revealed itself.
Over a 14-6 game-closing run to the roses, Langley Christian entered that rarified space which every team strives to find, if only for a few minutes once or twice a season.
For the last five-plus minutes of the game, everything unfolded in near-perfect fashion as the Lightning overcame Mulgrave’s last lead (63-61) of the game, which had come off a Ruse 14-foot jumper.
Still LCS clinging to a one-possession in the final 30 seconds seconds at 72-69, Bradshaw scrambled to to corral a loose ball under the Langley Christian basket on an entry pass intended for Ruse and found Van der Hoven sprinting down the floor for a lay-in and a 74-69 lead with 19.6 seconds left.
What most defined the Lightning’s signature fourth quarter?
On a night in which it went 16-of-18 from the free throw line for the game, it put on display a razor-sharp level of focus in the game’s single-most focus-oriented discipline.
Langley Christian went 15-of-16 from the stripe in the second half, including 10 straight at one stage along what would be its fourth-quarter victory march.
The streak was broken when Bradshaw missed the first of two with 11.4 seconds remaining, her subsequent make accounting for the game’s final point.
Afterwards, Mulgrave head coach Claude Leduc tipped his hat to the Lightning’s MVP.
“Colette defensively hassled us and offensively got to the rack,” said Leduc who could not hide the pride he had for his own players. “She went around people and went through people, and then they stepped to the line and they made fouls shots.
“Langley Christian came out and wanted everything,” added Leduc. “They won the 50/50 balls, they battled hard, they took away the stuff we like to do and they made it hard. So I feel for the girls.”
Van der Hoven was 8-of-8 on the game, including 6-of-6 in the fourth quarter, a stat that even basketball metrics expert will tell you is worth its weight in gold.
Bradshaw was no slouch, either. She got six trips, all in the fourth in the fourth, and made five straight.
Don’t know what the winning percentage is when two teammates combine to go 11-of-12 from the free throw line in the fourth quarter, but dollars to doughnuts is pretty darn high.
YES, COACHES LOVE THEIR ‘KIDS’
The Lightning will graduate Van der Hoven, Bradshaw and Black but no doubt come back next year with a team capable of making noise as a title contender .
Yet it was a senior in Colette Van der Hoven and a ninth grader in Gabby Vis who provided a most unique juxtaposition of a true program’s ability to coach up its veterans to MVP status while at the same time, unveil a unique freshman talent.
Both played within themselves and while Van der Hoven’s efficiency sky-rocketed with 13 rebounds and six assists to go along with those 25 points, Vis paid back the trust Gardner placed in her tenfold with a game that was about as perfect as you could expect from a ninth-grade talent playing on the biggest stage of her young career.
Said Gardner when asked about Van der Hoven: “She is one of those kids that just loves the game, really has a passion for it, and it’s just really nice to see all of her hard work paying off and her shining in the spotlight. It’s fun to watch.”
Added Gardner when asked about Vis: “She was amazing tonight. You wouldn’t expect that from a Grade 9. She stepped in and she was a huge factor for us. Like I said, Eva is tough to stop and and we didn’t stop her, but we tried to limit her as much as we could and I thought Gabby was just fantastic stepping up.”
Yes, coaches love their ‘kids’.
And thanks for reading this story, because let’s face, that photo is so great that you probably already knew how this one was going to end.
(Writer’s note — My thanks to a dear friend, Wilson Wong, for allowing me to use this photograph. The B.C. girls basketball championships have meant the world to the both of us for the past 20 or so years, and I feel like the image he captured of coach Danielle Gardner had a little bit of karma behind it.
Earlier in the day Saturday, Wilson’s camera was on the fritz, so I offered him the use of my Nikon as well as the same lens I use to take all of my basketball photos. As added karma, the camera body Wilson used is one I purchased from friend and renowned professional ace Richard Lam. Wilson clearly doesn’t need any help, but I like to think that as purveyors of excellence in sports photography, that the universe gave all three of us a little nudge.)
Fantastic article. You captured the game beautifully.
Thank you for this Howard. You’re a gift.
Thank you. Well written.