PITT MEADOWS 82 vs. BYRNE CREEK 32
BURNABY — Thirty-three years is a long time, but when it comes to high school basketball memories, it can seem all seem as recent as yesterday.
That what Jason Boyes thought to himself as the head coach of the Pitt Meadows senior girls basketball team piloted his car up Burnaby Mountain on Sunday afternoon for the Marauders’ meeting with Burnaby’s Byrne Creek Bulldogs in the Fraser North Triple-A championship final.
And on a day when Pitt Meadows dominated from start to end en route to an 82-32 win to claim the zone’s lone berth to the B.C. championships tournament set to begin a week Wednesday at the Langley Events Centre, Boyes was feeling a sense of deja vu during the post-game award ceremonies.
Not only was he able to pose with his two daughters, senior Rebecca and Grade 10 Jocelyn, his wife Celeste and the Fraser North title banner, he was doing so on the occasion of Jocelyn being named tournament MVP following her senior varsity breakout 28-point outpouring.
“As a side note, I think it’s cool that we won what is sort of the Fraser Valleys here at Simon Fraser,” he said of the new zone’s decision to bring its championship tournament’s final day to the top of Burnaby Mountain. “And that’s because I won the Valleys here in 1991. I’ve still got the picture on my office wall. So to now coach my kids and win (the Fraser North) here is special.”
The Fraser Valley, formerly the largest zone in all B.C. high school sports, has splintered into a number of smaller zones including the Fraser North, Eastern Valley and South Fraser, yet during its glory days, its championship final was contested in the old West Gym at SFU. And it remains close to the hearts of all of those who competed in it.
Boyes showed Sunday that it is indeed grand-fathered in the hearts of those players of a certain vintage.
And that’s because Boyes was a starting senior guard on the Marauders’ 1990-91 team coached by the late, legendary Rich Goulet on a team which also included starters Scott Walton, Jay McBride, Ryan Mulder and James Ford, one which beat arch-rival Centennial Centaurs in the now-defunct zone’s title game.
Now, over three decades after that win, there were the Boyes sisters, getting it done with panache.
Jocelyn, who loves to push the tempo, looked a lot like her team’s leader despite her youth, hitting big shots, playing tough defence and just generally looking like a young talent ready to test herself against her tier’s best next week at the LEC.
Rebecca, now a senior, added a further 13 points. Gracie Lagrange with 10 points and Presley Shaw-Jaworek with eight points rounded out the top four scorers.
The Bulldogs came out and scored the first five points of the game, but after that, the Marauders dominated.
Despite their obvious superiority, coach Boyes was just like any other coach before a sudden-elimination game with a berth to provincials on the line.
“You always have to play the game, I was stressed all week,” he said. “Kids can get sick, kids can get injured. My older daughter Rebecca, back when she was in Grade 10, she got injured in a (junior) playoff game I thought we should have won, and we lost. It was the game to go to the Fraser North tournament. So that kind of stuff is always in the back of your mind.”
And so were those memories of 33 years ago.
“Even when I was driving up the hill today, I remembered driving up the hill with my teammates back in ’91 in an old, crappy K-car,” he laughed. “Every time I see the Simon Fraser sign, I think about playing here. Today was special.”
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