The Interior Conference Regional Basketball Tournament, held last weekend at Su-Valley High School, quickly switched from a double elimination tournament, to a single elimination contest.
Concerns surrounding the Covid-19 virus caused the tournament to wrap up a day early. This led to the Conference Champions being crowned on Friday, but leaving the number two spot unknown.
Normally, the Interior Conference sends both the Champions and the Runner-Up teams to the State Tournament, but the State Championships have been cancelled this year, due to the virus.
The Susitna Valley girls team came into the Regional tournament seeded number two this year, giving them a good chance to head to state, something the girls basketball team hasn’t accomplished since 1989, thirty one years ago.
Coach Jimmy Sickler feels positive about the team’s progress this year and the future possibilities for this young team.
“I think the strength of this year’s girls team is definitely their attitudes and their effort. We are young and inexperienced, but we have a lot of players that want to improve, that have improved throughout the season. They don’t get discouraged by any of the physical play, so they’re tough kids, tough mentally, tough physically, and then we do have some growing skills too, especially from our leaders which are Kenna Grenier and India Roderick. We don’t have any seniors on our team. We have a lot of freshman. We have three sophomores on our varsity team and then one eleventh grader. We really feel like we’re going to be better next year and have a really good shot at it again next year.”
The conclusion of Conference Tournament wraps up the basketball season for the Susitna Valley Rams.
