The Claremont Spartans senior girls head coach has one goal in mind for this basketball season.
“Our expectation is to get off the Island,” Dheensaw said of qualifying for the provincial triple-A championship.
“Oak Bay is the cream of the crop,” he added of his opponent after a 75-42 loss in league-opening Lower Vancouver Island triple-A league play on the Spartans’ home court on Tuesday night. “After that it’s a dogfight and I look at ourselves, Dover Bay and Mark Isfeld fighting for the next two spots.
“I give them credit,” Dheensaw added of the Oak Bay Breakers, ranked No. 2 in B.C. “They’re solid from No 1 down to No. 12 on the bench. Yes, we were missing our top player, but they were missing theirs as well.”
Dheensaw’s daughter, Marissa, and Oak Bay’s Lauren Yearwood are both at a national Under-16 camp in Toronto, which took a little of the flair out of Tuesday’s matchup. But the absences just opened up spots for both benches, although Claremont’s was awfully thin, count-wise, on this evening.
“They’re a great team and to get this win was important,” said Breakers’ coach Rob Kinnear. “They’ve had our number the last few years.
“They are well coached — a good team. Even the score today wasn’t indicative of the game. Both teams went deep into their benches. They’re missing arguably their best player and having Dheensaw back will make a big difference.
“The ironic part is those two girls [Dheensaw and Yearwood] are best friends, they’re actually rooming together as their teams were facing each other here,” added Kinnear, whose team looks prepared to go a long way this season.
Yearwood’s absence created a hole in the middle, which was immediately plugged by Danielle Cavelti, who filled in more than admirably with 20 points on Tuesday.
“She doesn’t often get a lot of minutes,” said Kinnear. “She’s one of our big girls, and with Lauren being gone Danielle made the most of it and then some. We talked about it beforehand and she responded.”
The Breakers got off to a 6-0 run in the first quarter and took a 20-11 advantage into the second. A 7-0 run in the opening minutes of the second helped create a 37-21 lead at the half. It was 55-37 after three quarters before the Breakers ran off and hid.
Point guards Morgan Roskelley and Haley Cabral both play vital roles for their respective clubs, Oak Bay and Claremont, who are the top two teams in Victoria.
“They’re both Grade 10s,” Kinnear said of Roskelley and Yearwood, his two leaders. “They play a lot older game than their age indicates. Morgan does a whole bunch for us. The nice part about her is when your best player is a pass-first player ... we spend most of our time yelling at her to shoot more. She’s so unselfish.
“Our greatest strength is we’re very deep,” added Kinnear. “It’s awesome because we can go deep. At the same time, it makes it tough when you look at the bench and say, ‘;You’re a good player, and you’re a good player, and you’re a good player, and you can only put five on the floor.”
The Breakers are benefiting from last year’s junior girls championship team.
The Spartans, meanwhile, will develop as they go along.
“We have three losses [including pre-season play], to the No. 2 team in the province [Oak Bay], No. 3 [Brookswood] and No. 4, Maple Ridge,” said Dheensaw. “There’s a real gap after the top six. We’re probably a No. 10-15 team, but there is quite a gap.”
