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Vytis girls' Division 1 provincial title the reward for years of hard work By Herb Garbutt Oakville Beaver staff 53 | Thursday, April 21, 2016 | OAKVILLE BEAVER | www.insideHALTON.com Clinging to a one-point lead late in the third quarter of the Ontario Basketball Association final, Oakville Vytis needed a spark. Off the bench came Victoria DaSilva, who drove to the basket and made a layup and drew a foul as the quarter came to an end. She finished off the three-point play to give Oakville a little more breathing room heading into the final quarter. "It was only a four-point cushion but it felt like 15," said Vytis coach Alanna Juzenas. The coach's confidence came from her belief in the team's ability to play defence, which had always been the team's hallmark. Led by Katy Hartman, Oakville forced the Windsor Valiants into taking difficult shots. "Windsor has the best offensive player in the province," Juzenas said, "but Katy's the best defensive player in the province and she shut her down." If Windsor did manage to work the ball inside, it had to contend with 6-foot-2 Helena Lasic, who managed to deny any opportunities around the basket without committing fouls. Oakville, which trailed 15-10 at halftime, would not surrender a field goal in the second half. A free throw three minutes into the third quarter was all Windsor managed as Oakville shut out its opponents over the final 13 minutes to win 28-16 and claim the provincial girls under-13 Division 1 championship Sunday in Windsor. "It was exciting. My heart was beating so fast," said Jessica Dougall, who had eight points in the final. "I was thinking, `Wow, we did it. All our hard work paid off'." That hard work began four years earlier when Dougall decided to follow the lead of her sister and play basketball. But when she went to the try out, there weren't enough players to form a team. Still wanting to play, Dougall talked to her friends on her soccer team and began recruiting them to play basketball. Eight of those players remain on the provincial championship team. It wasn't easy at first. "They would step on the line and wonder why that was out of bounds," Juzenas said. "Because in soccer, on the line is in bounds." When the team played its first game, it lost 44-1. But it improved enough that season to win the OBA Division 3 championship. The following year, it made the jump to Division 1 and finished seventh. Last year, the team won the Division 1 bronze medal. The victory that secured the medal wasn't the biggest win of the tournament, though. Oakville beat Transway White, the team that would go on to win the provincial title, in a round-robin game. "That showed us we could be a top team, that we could beat anyone," Dougall said. "It was just how much we wanted it." This season Oakville went 32-3, win- The Oakville Vytis defeated Windsor to win the Ontario Basketball Association girls under-13 division 1 championship. Team members are: (back row, from left) coach Alana Juzenas, Iyana Knights, Ashley Elliot, Helena Lasic, Teah Stupar, Katie Hartman, Isabella Boyd, coach Julia Mulligan (front row, from left) Jessica Dougall, Madeline McWilliam, Victoria DaSilva, Madison Tu, Abbey Kanalec, Gillian Rodreiguez-Lee and Lauren Rina. | photo submitted ning all three tournaments it entered. It also won four of its six meetings with Transway White, which went into the provincials as the No. 1 seed. Oakville went 4-0 at provincials, downing Hamilton's Transway Red 48-33 in its opening game, led by Dougall's 15 points and 13 from Teah Stupar. It followed up with a 3423 win over Brantford CYO in which Lasic scored 10 and Stupar had eight. Oakville secured its place in the final with 39-27 victory over North Toronto Basketball. Stupar had 10 points and Lasic added eight. Though the margins of victory looked comfortable, Juzenas said the games were much closer than they appeared. "The 10-point leads never happened until the last three minutes," she said. "There was never really a point where you could say, `We've got this.'" When the final buzzer did sound, Oakville had its provincial title, one that might not have seemed very likely four years ago. "We owe it all to our coaches," Dougall said of the team's improvement. "They pushed us to do our best." "I don't know if I've ever seen a group of such hard workers," Juzenas said. "They love a challenge. They wanted it. They were going to camps in the summer and they kept working so hard. It shows hard work does pay off." Defence steps up in second half to help Vytis bantam girls win OBA Division 3 title By Herb Garbutt Oakville Beaver staff Up by five points at halftime in the Ontario Basketball Association bantam girls' division 3 championship game, the Oakville Vytis 2 couldn't rest despite being two quarters away from an Ontario title. Playing a Waterloo Wildhawk team that had beaten Vytis in a tournament two weeks earlier, Oakville wouldn't allow their rivals to get back in the game as it went on to a 31-22 victory. "Our defence really picked up in the third quarter," said Vytis coach Cailin Miziolek. "We forced a lot of turnovers and turned them into layups." Oakville went into the tournament as the sixth seed in the division but defied its ranking to win the gold. It knocked off the second-, third- and fourth-ranked teams to win the title. The players showed their coach she need not worry about a letdown. Facing No. 3 seed London, Oakville rolled to a 38-25 victory and then followed up with a strong defensive effort in a 33-20 win over Guelph. In the final, Oakville played a Waterloo team that had easily beaten the tournament's No. 1 ranked team, Valhalla, 39-16. Waterloo averaged 36 points in its first three games of the tournament, but Oakville didn't allow the Wildhawks' offence to get rolling. "They had two really good offensive players but one got into foul trouble early, so they weren't on the floor together very much," Miziolek said. "That let our defence to key in on their best player." Members of the Vytis division 3 championship team are Alexandra Wight, Andra Capannelli, Dana Ventenilla, Faith Munro, Faith Nevado, Jaimeson Vaillant. Julia Cipriano, Maha Shawkat, Mara Vargatu, Martina Errazo, Valentyna Pawlowska and coaches Cailin Miziolek, Doreen Bonsu and Camillo Cipriano. The Vytis bantam 2 girls basketball team was up by only five at halftime in its OBA Division 3 championship game against Waterloo, but finished with a nine-point victory. | photo submitted It faced a challenge right out of the gate, playing second-seeded St. Catharines in its opening game. St. Catharines had beaten Oakville in all three of its previous meetings, though two of those were by a single point. It was once again a close game but Oakville built a small lead in the final min- utes and St. Catharines was forced to foul. Oakville capitalized on its foul shots as it posted a 38-29 victory. "We knew St. Catharines would be our biggest test," Miziolek said. "The girls were very excited to beat them but we had to remind them we still needed two more wins to get to the final."