The holiday season was gift wrapped for the Salmon Arm Secondary Senior Jewels basketball team.
Prior to the holiday break, the girls team travelled to New Westminster Dec. 19 to 21 for a tournament. A power outage pushed the girls’ first game from Wednesday night to Thursday lunch time in front of the home team’s crowd. The Jewels beat the home team 66-56, with Haylie Gibb scoring 20 points and Aly Bannister putting up 14. The following day they Jewels played Pitt Meadows, soundly doubling the score and winning 60-30. Trice Tuaiti was high scorer with 14 points. The third and final game of the tournament was against Elgin Park. Brooke Rempel provided 21 points while Tuaiti and Gibb put in 13 and 12 points respectively. The Jewels came home with their second tournament win of the season.
The next night the Jewels played in their annual Homecoming tournament. Their first game on Dec. 22 was against the younger alumni, and the following afternoon was for alumni five years and longer. The Jewels were a little disappointed by the sparse turnout of the older alumni.
The Senior girls basketball team has just overcome a busy week, having five back-to-back games. The first game was in South Kamloops, where the Jewels lost, keeping the Titians down to 67 points and scoring 39 themselves. High scorer was Brooke Rempel. The second game was much more eventful, winning at home against the Norkam Saints 68-39. Tuaiti claimed 12 points.
The Jewels then attended the Voodoos Hard Court Classic at Rutland Secondary, bringing home the gold. The girls worked hard to beat Unity Christian school 60-29. Gibb scored a high of 15 points. Next, the team battled to beat D.P. Todd 66-40 for the chance to play for first. The Jewels then beat Rutland 51-30.
The Senior Jewels all worked well together and, at the end of the week Sam Bergman, Lisa Petterson and Tuaiti took home All Stars.