Royals senior b-ball team going to final

February 27, 2017 · 0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

The Centre Dufferin District High School Royals senior basketball team have earned their spot in the District 4 final after a 59-26 win over the Wellington Heights Secondary School Wolverines on the court at CDDHS on Thursday, February 16.

The Royals finished the regular season in second place with a 6-2 record.

Thursday’s game saw the CDDHS squad take an early lead then widen the gap in the second quarter, extending their lead to 16 points to go ahead 27-11 at the half.

The pace continued with the Royals 15 points ahead at the end of the third quarter.

Returning for the final quarter, the Shelburne squad was on fire as they hit hoop after hoop scoring 24 points to end the game with a 59-25 win to earn their place in the final.

“It was the sort of game were we didn’t really bring our best,” said Royals forward Henry McGowan after the win. “We have a really talented team, we fought hard. It was one of those grinding-out games. We continuously battled, from the first guy to the twelfth guy – we fought hard.”

The win gives the squad one week to prepare for the final District championship game against the Westside Secondary School Thunder in Orangeville.

Westside ended the season in first place as an undefeated team and got a bye in the playoffs.

“Westside has a bunch of really talented guys – a lot of great athletes. For us we’ll have to compete with them and keep the intensity up for the entire game. The big thing for us in this game is to keep up the intensity from start to finish. If we get down, instead of rolling over, we have to get back up and keep fighting,” McGowan said of preparing for the championship.

Centre Dufferin and Westside met twice during the regular season with Westside coming on top in both games, but they were close, very competitive match-ups and the final could go either way.

The final championship game was slated to get underway in Orangeville at the Westside gym on Wednesday, February 22.

Results were not available at press time.