Tri-County Girls U15 Basketball Team Wins Silver at the Ontario Summer Games

Sudbury, Ontario was host to the 3000+ athletes and 600+ coaches participating in the 2010 Ontario Summer Games from Tuesday, August 10th to Friday, August 13th. The basketball teams were part of the Elite Development Program run by Ontario Basketball, including the Midget Development Program (MDP) for the U15 level. MDP is designed to develop athletes in preparation for the next levels of competition, including the provincial and national team programs.

Tri-County coaches Rick Baldin (Brantford) and Dale Bellaire (Waterloo) hosted the girls tryouts in early May, inviting U15 girls from Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, Guelph and Brantford. The team chosen from the tryouts practiced hard over the summer, attending a tournament in Michigan in June and playing exhibition games locally. Local players included Blair McNaughton, Erin Helsby, Natalie Bishop and Elizabeth
McLellan, all from KW Lightning.

At the Summer Games, the girls went 4 and 0 beating teams from Kawartha Region (58-39), Northern Ontario Region (50-31), Central East (64-57) and finally St. Clair (57-46), advancing to the gold medal game against Central West.

The team got off to a great start in the gold medal game and were down at the 1/2 by only one point. In the third quarter they were down by 15 points but managed to pull it back to within 4 points with 2 three pointers from Bishop, and strong foul shooting by McNaughton and Helsby. The girls fought hard but lost to Central West with a final score of 70-62.

“The girls worked extremely hard in June and July and we started tapering off in late July to give the girls some vacation time which helped the girls to peak at exactly the right time,” said Coach Bellaire.

Coaches and Parents are very proud of the girls’ accomplishment!