Senior Red Hawks season ends in Cobourg

By Terrance Gavan - HSP Editor

Jenna Dibblee scored five points in her final game
as a Red Hawk. Great season for Senior hoopsters.

I don’t know what Cobourg’s famous for.

   If they had an Alamo we might talk about valiant stands in the face of overwhelming odds.

   But Cobourg has no such edifice … and as far as I know, no heroic backstory.

   Maybe someone invented an ice cream flavor there?

   And so perhaps we’ll just think of Cobourg as a place where a plucky flock Red Hawks flew smack dab into the roiling eye of a Hurricane.

   Or several Hurricanes.

   Or maybe we could just toss out some Twain: “Cobourg … a pleasant drive … spoiled.”

   Last Friday (Nov 12) the Hal High senior hoops squad dropped their sudden death Kawartha semi-final to Holy Cross down south in Cobourg, Ontario.

   Final score was 50-9.

   And lest you think that the Hurricanes blew through with the Hammer of Thor, you should know that both Red Hawk coaches, Sharon Dibblee and Brett Caputo, passed praise to the Holy Cross coaching staff.

   “We were clearly outmatched,” said Caputo on Monday.

   “They (Holy Cross) were very, very strong and they had some great shooters,” said Dibblee. “We were outplayed and outmatched.”

   Dibblee said that Holy Cross coaches kept their starters off the floor for most of the game.

   Cobourg West ousted Kenner in the other semi-final and Holy Cross took the Kawartha championship with a statement win against the host team and the Hurricanes will be moving on to COSSA this week.

   “Well they didn’t play their starters, but we couldn’t score in the first half,” said Dibblee.

   To their credit the Hal High women refused to pack it in, scoring all nine of their points in the second half.

   “We told them at halftime to pick it up and give it their all,” said Dibblee, and Caputo said he was quite pleased with his team’s play in the second half.

   The seniors had not played Holy Cross during the regular season, but Caputo said the Hurricanes’ reputation preceded them.

   “We knew they were going to be strong going in,” said Caputo.

   The Hurricanes funnel from a strong junior program which is built on a strong foundation of rep league basketball in the Peterborough area.

   Jenna Dibblee scored five points while Paige Roberts and Maia O’Sullivan scored a basket apiece to account for all of the Hawks’ scoring.

   “It was a good season and we had fun,” said Caputo. “We did the best we could with what we had

After the game was over they were okay on the bus ride home.”

   And why not. This was a team whose status was in doubt at the beginning of September.

   Four girls who had never played basketball before answered the call to arms.

   After a slow start they gradually improved, all while playing in a Kawartha West league where they were the lone AA school in a stronger mix of bigger AAA schools from Lindsay and Fenelon Falls.

   Dibblee said that if Cobourg provided a bittersweet denouement to the season; a 38-36 overtime victory in the Kawartha wild card play-in tourney at the Red Hawks Nest last Tuesday (Nov 9) was surely the highlight of the Hawks season.

   Indeed, I ran into a few parents around town last week and they were still talking about that beautiful screaming celebration after the Clarke win.

   Now, that was before they knew that the win earned them the right to face off against that Holy Cross juggernaut.

   But let’s just say that in two weeks the memory that will ingrain in the minds of this valiant young Hawks’ squad will be that screaming celebration at the Nest.

   And not the end of the road in Cobourg.

   So many props and dap to a superlative squad of overachievers.