GO Ball, the city's girls-only basketball program, has seen its participation numbers rise over the years.
James McCarthy/NNSL photo
Last weekend, more than five dozen girls hit the hardcourt for the association's annual McLennan Ross GO Play 3-on-3 Tournament at Weledeh and St. Pat's gymnasiums.
Cygni Brown, the tournament's co-ordinator, said the number of girls involved was up from 2016.
“We had 54 last year so seeing that is awesome,” she said. “It was a great weekend and a really positive experience for the girls. There's been plenty of good feedback from the parents and that's always a bonus.”
There were three divisions for this year's tournament: U8/U9, U11 and U14. The U7 division, the youngest of the groups under the GO Ball banner, didn't play in the tournament but got a chance to show what they've been learning at the tournament's opening ceremony on Oct. 13.
The U11 champions this year was Team Tornado. Team Lynx won the U14 division. The U8/U9 division didn't have a winner – they weren't keeping score.
“There's never been any score kept in that division because the goal is to encourage teamwork,” said Brown. “We don't want to impose any score on them. We just want them to have fun.”
Putting the tournament together is always a big effort and Brown had plenty of help this year..
“Melissa Bard looked after the skills competition that we do,” she said. “We had a group working on accumulating prizes, we had a group doing registrations and another doing advertising.”
“We also had a lot of people help out with coaching, which was important when the games were happening.”
Several members of the city's high performance girls basketball team, both past and present, came to the tournament.
Brown said having them there gives the younger girls someone to look up to – and something to work towards.
“We had them give a pep talk at the opening ceremony about what it was like to be a basketball player and some of them even helped out with refereeing games in the younger divisions,” she said.
“Younger people learn from those who are older and, hopefully, the younger girls looked at the high performance girls and saw that basketball can lead to great things.”