It was a weekend to remember for the Caronport Cougars basketball program.

Both the Cougar girls and boys teams picked up silver medals over the weekend at Hoopla 2018 in Prince Albert after making it into their respective provincial finals.

The Caronport boys dropped a 100-84 game to St. Brieux in the 2A boys championship game this past Saturday.

“We had a great season with a great bunch of boys. I was proud to be their coach and sad that it is all over,” said Cougars head coach Shane Sowden.

“The gold medal game was an intense battle with many momentum swings in a great environment in a packed gym. The game was actually very close and could have gone either way until late.”

The Cougars entered provincial with a lot of confidence after playing their way through the conference and regional play-downs. Sowden said they were able to get healthy down the stretch and that paid off for them at provincials where they played two strong games to come way with the bronze medal.

“In the semi final against Saskatoon Christian, we wanted to stay disciplined and hold them to one shot on each possession. They have some very good shooters and we were able to hold them to only two three-pointers for the game, so our defense was very strong,” said Sowden. “In the final, we were the underdogs. St. Brieux is ridiculously quick and fast and they want to force you into making mistakes under pressure. Again, we handled it well and I thought we had the momentum half way through the third, but we couldn't sustain losing (point guard Ethan Douglas to a foul out) for the last six minutes.”

Sowden added that he saw a ton of growth in the team throughout the year and they've got a good base moving forward, “It was a lot of fun to coach a group of guys who bought in every day at practice and wanted to get better. They were coachable and motivated,” he said.

The Caronport girls knocked off Lumsden 57-46 in a tight semifinal game to advance into the 3A girls provincial final where they dropped a 72-60 game to Regina Christian. In the final, the Cougars got off to a slow start, falling behind 12-0 and they weren’t able to close that gap despite strong play for the rest of the game.

“We were very pleased with how hard the girls worked, the seniors in particular really stepped up in the final game,” said Cougars assistant coach Dwight Olney.

“Regina Christian is a very fine team, they're basically a juggernaut and we worked hard, we got in a bit of a hole at the beginning, but played even with them for the rest of the game. The girls battled hard.”

The Cougars were a team that grew throughout the year and peaked heading into provincials. They won five tournaments during the season and Olney said it was all through the will and determination of the players.

“We weren't sure with this team at the beginning of the year, but they exceed our expectations, they grew quite a bit,” said Olney.

Caronport will have five seniors moving on after this season, but they have a solid base set to return and Olney is expecting them to learn from the experience gained this season and take it to the next level next season.

“Our seniors with their team leadership, especially Hayley Hiebert, who wasn't always a big scorer for us, but just a solid point guard that showed the girls how to run the floor and they learned what she does and how she does it,” said Olney. “There was lots of great lessons learned from the seniors, but we have some strength coming back for next year.”

The two Caronport teams were part of the five local medallists at provincials and seven teams in total from the 10-team Moose Jaw High School Basketball League that advanced to Hoopla this year. Click here for full results.