Peacock Advances to City Final

The Peacock Toilers and Central Cyclones have been the top-two teams in the Moose Jaw High School Senior Girls Basketball League all season and it’s only fitting that they will meet for the league championship next week.

Peacock rolled to an 86-33 win over the Caronport Cougars, while Central cruised to a 77-35 win over the Vanier Spirits in Thursday’s semifinal action to set-up the showdown between the two rivals.

Toilers senior Katherine McDougall said Peacock wasn’t at their best in the semifinal game and will need to get on track heading into the city final.

“Initially we weren’t boxing out and we just need to learn to keep the intensity up at all times, so that needs to be our focus moving forward,” she said.

Peacock’s Piper Ingalls led all scorers with 14 points in the win, while Abby Busch, Kennedy Ward and Megan MacDonald posted 10 points each.

As has become a custom for the Toilers, they raced out to a 30-6 lead in the first quarter and didn’t really look back, extending that lead to 51-13 by halftime.

McDougall said their play on defence ended up being a big part of the win for Peacock, “That’s something we can always rely on is playing strong D. The girls are always hungry on defence, which is good,” she said.

The Cougars battled back in the second half, scoring 12 points in the third quarter and then adding another eight in the fourth.

Cougars freshman guard Mya Matthies said she’s proud of how they fought in the game, “We’re a smaller school, but we fought hard and gave what we could have, so I’m happy with how we did,” she said.

On the provincial level, the Cougars are one of the top teams in the 3A division. Matthies said while they may not have find a lot of success in the Moose Jaw League, they’re able gain a lot heading into the run towards Hoopla.

“Getting here was nice for us, we beat Assiniboia, so that was a good accomplishment for us and we knew that going into this game, it was something to learn from and focus on the little details, which we did,” said Matthies.

“We started not very confident and then to get where, we’re very happy with how we’ve progressed. In tournaments, we’ve done very well, which we’re really happy about.”

Melissa Ellis had seven points to pace the offence for the Cougars, while Emma Carter picked up six points.

Caronport will now travel to Kindersley this weekend for the 3A girls conference tournament. 

In the other semifinal, the Cyclones rolled to the win over the Spirits to get another shot at beating Peacock.