B.C. CHAMPIONSHIPS
DOUBLE-A
NO. 2 SMUS 62 NO . 1 HOLY CROSS 54
By HOWARD TSUMURA (Varsity Letters)
LANGLEY — They didn’t just borrow a page from the mythical tales of Sisyphus.
No.
In fact at times over their prior two seasons, it almost felt like the senior girls basketball team from Victoria’s St. Michaels University School was gathering the kind of first-hand knowledge which would enable them to write a new chapter or two of their own.
You’ve likely heard of Sisyphus.
He was the guy from Greek mythology condemned for all eternity to roll a gigantic boulder to the top of a hill only to have it roll all the way back down every time he got near the top.
In both 2023 and 2024, SMUS’ Blue Jags advanced all the way to the B.C. Triple-A championship game, only to lose 67-64 to Abbotsford in ’23 and then in ’24 fall 69-63 in overtime to Langley’s Brookswood Bobcats.
If you substitute a basketball for a boulder, and Basketball gods for Greek gods, well, it kind of reads like the same book.
This season, however, playing within a Double-A tier many pundits tabbed, at its high end, to be more competitive than any other in the province, the Blue Jags managed to maintain their traction through the tough times, and on that last page penned an ending which managed to flip mythology’s script.
And by the time the final buzzer sounded Saturday night, there they were, like Kate Bush sings… “running up that hill” and standing at the top.
The No. 2 seed Jags, behind a 25-point performance from senior point guard and new B.C. tournament MVP Avery Geddes, dug in their heels down the stretch drive and won the school’s first-ever provincial senior girls varsity basketball title, defeating the No. 1-seeded Holy Cross Crusaders of Surrey with a kind of resilient, relentless mindset shaped by their past heartbreak.
Well, maybe that’s not the right word.
“I don’t know if it is ‘heartbreak,’” countered SMUS head coach Lindsay Brooke, who happens to be Avery Geddes’ mom, as well as a two-time CIAU (now U SPORTS) national champion during her playing days under the legendary Kathy Shields at UVic.
“In the moment, it is,” she added of how the journeys of the past two seasons had sharpened their collective mettle yet still ended just shy of the hill’s crest. “But honestly, one game doesn’t make our season. Absolutely, you’d have loved to have won, but when you reflect, it’s just part of sports.”
And on Saturday, as the B.C. girls tournament celebrated a landmark 75th birthday with its move into Arena Bowl, there was something about the way its four starting seniors — Geddes, Charlie Anderson, Joss Olcen, Olivia Pickering — went about there business on the floor, channeling the persona of their coach in the biggest game of their lives by playing tough, physical and heartfelt hoops, and all the while willing to let the chips fall where they may because ‘that’s just part of sports.’.
There was Geddes, who last season missed a huge chunk of playing time after suffering a hand injury, opening the game by knocking down four early triples, then down the stretch, ably holding the reins and settling more into her brand of in-game generalship.
“All the early morning practices, they were all worth it in the end,” Geddes said. “This team was willing to work hard on defence and we have a willingness to do whatever it takes to win.”
And there was the 6-foot-1 forward Pickering, not exactly anonymous provincially, but not exactly a familiar name either, closing out the final game of her high school career with so many big rebounds that Holy Cross head coach Amy Beauchamp later remarked: “She killed us. She just worked so hard, and she got really key rebounds at really important times and that really hurt us.”
“It was super-tough to lose multiple times, but then to come back again and come out with the win, it’s an awesome experience,” said Pickering, who has played well all tournament, yet gave the perfect master class to prove that, even in the 11th hour, B.C. first team all-star accolades are never that far out of reach to those who believe.
To make it twice as nice for the Blue Jags, Pickering’s tough and athletic teammate Anderson was also named to the first all-star team.
On the other side, with fully 95 per cent of her team returning from an appearance in this season’s final, Crusaders’ coach Beauchamp could understand the teaching moments she would be taking into the offseason.
“I’m super-excited,” she said. “We’re all Grade 11’s except for one (this season) with two Grade 10s. I know SMU has some 12s, and you can tell their experience (in two prior finals) really helped in this situation.
“Hopefully the girls remember what it was like to lose and don’t want that feeling again.”
It was game in which the stars came out to shine.
While Geddes scored 25 and teammate Anderson another 14, two of Holy Cross’ nine-deep Grade 11 class also shone. Star 6-foot Grade 11 Solene Jackson, picked the tournament’s Top Defensive Player, added 24, while high-tempo guard Isla Iannuzzi , a first-team all-star, added 17 more.
And while SMUS got quality minutes from the height it gained in putting Grade 10s Elspeth Rodger (5-foot-11) and Mikaela Dubé into the fray to offset the Crusaders’ length and athleticism, the real unsung here was a certain aforementioned senior starter who picked the perfect time to meet her potential.
Coach Brooke didn’t have to be prompted when it came time to talking about one Olivia Pickering, who scored nine of her 11 points in the fourth quarter. Yet perhaps more importantly was the the timely nature of her rebounds (a game-high 12 with five offensive) and the way they wound up steering the final five minutes of the game towards a breaking point when the Crusaders had to begin fouling.
Her biggest play? Somehow finding a way to get a stop on Holy Cross’ Jackson in the paint with just under 39 seconds remaining and the Blue Jags leading 58-52.
From that stage on, the Blue Jags closed the game out with eight straight trips to the free throw line.
“No. 12, Olivia, she had the tournament of her life,” Brooke began of Pickering. “Literally, that is the best she has played in five years. You go in (to provincials) and you think ‘How are players going to play in that moment’. She was a star and that is the ‘magic’ piece in all of this. That’s the stuff you can’t script.”
Yet there was even more of the unscriptable in the air on Saturday.
It was just about two weeks into last season, Geddes’ Grade 11 campaign at SMUS, that the team’s point guard tore a ligament in her thumb on the eve of her team’s first big invitational tournament of the year.
“She was so gutted about missing the Tsumura,” said Brooke of her daughter having to sit on the bench but not play when her team arrived for the annual TBI tourney at the LEC. “The thumb injury set her back, but in the long term it was really good for us, because the other girls had to step up and play.
“And now, she’s going to play for the Vikes, “ Brooke continued of creating a family tradition, this time under Victoria head coach Carrie Watts. “She’s got a fantastic career ahead of her and I am so pumped.”
The 75th anniversary of the B.C. girls tournament, for all of the different ways in which it chose to honour its history, seemed at times to have karma on a string.
So many people and so many events seemed to suddenly reveal themselves, as if on cue, to be synchronous enough with each other in ways which suggested the work of the basketball gods.
Like how Lindsay Brooke gets honoured as a member of the freshly-minted B.C. all-time Team of the 1990s by the 75th anniversary tournament committee, then leads SMUS past two seasons of title-game losses to the first B.C. girls senior title in school history with her daughter, point guard Avery Geddes, being named the tournament’s MVP in her last high school game before joining the same UVic Vikes program her mom herself starred for through the latter half of the 1990s.
Your author will take the liberty of re-quoting Brooke, this time with gusto: “That’s the stuff you can’t script.”
“Someone asked me earlier this week what it’s like to coach her… she is amazing,” Avery’s mom said. “You saw today, she is just so calm, and that is such an asset in a big game. Nothing rattles her.”
Hmm.
Maybe, in some alternate universe, Sisyphus himself was watching Avery Geddes and the SMUS Blue Jags, readying himself for one more shot at conquering the big hill.
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