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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Friday, October 16, 2015 | 34 World Cup silver boosts Kyle Jones' confidence Laeticia Amihere (left) and Christina Morra, who have played together on the Ontario provincial team, are two key members of the King's Christian Collegiate Cavaliers. | photo by Rob Beintema -- Metroland Media Group Academic standards draw elite players to King's, coach says continued from p.33 2011 had been a one-point defeat at the hands of Nelson in the 2013 playoffs, when the Lords hit two free throws with 3.7 seconds left -- Loyola bounced back in style. The Hawks routed Jean Vanier 60-32 and Nelson 62-32 in their following two league games. Loyola's girls' basketball program doesn't rebuild, it reloads. Each season, it seems there is a couple of talented junior-aged players on the senior roster. When older players graduate, such as Kirkpatrick and Pocrnic this past spring, there are several experienced players ready to take their place. This year, Steinauer, Sofia Croce and Steph Findlay are the returning veterans. Grade 10 student Hannah Temple -- who played significant minutes last season -- and Grade 9 student Kali Pocrnic, Sam's younger sister, form the Hawks' new backcourt. "It's a conversation we have with the junior coaches," Hawks coach Sacha Bobanovic said. "I think you play up to your caliber. If you're able to play senior basketball, you should be able to. It doesn't matter your age." That philosophy helps explain how Loyola had been so dominant over the past five seasons, despite having a different coach in each of those years. "Inheriting this team, (I notice) there is that will to win," Bobanovic said. "I'm not out there (on the court) but there's a little pressure on me to make sure we perform. Loyola's got a good name." Trinity ready to come out of Hawks' shadow Some strong Trinity teams had been overshadowed in recent years by the even stronger one four kilometres away at Loyola. Before that, it was Burlington's Notre Dame Fighting Irish, which won six straight Halton Tier 1 titles from 2005-10. And the Titans always knew that if they could get by the Hawks or Irish in Halton, St. Thomas More laid in wait. "Those are (some) pretty big doorstoppers," said Trinity coach Anthony Pugliese. "But it made us better by trying to compete with them." Led by fifth-year senior Tiffany McNeil, the Titans might finally be in position to make their breakthrough. Trinity got excellent guard play from McNeil (27 points) and Jillian Condron (17), while the Titans' interior duo of Tayania Smith-Siwek and Ieva Sukeviciute limited the impact of Cavaliers forward and national under-16 player Laeticia Amihere. "Tayania and Ieva are both over six feet tall. They clog up the middle and play great (defence)," Pugliese said. "Any time we have to win a game, we'll rely on our defence. We pride ourselves on that. And we have a nice mix. We're not too small, we're not too big." The acid test for Trinity will likely still be the Hawks, who won last year's regular-season meeting between the Catholic rivals 54-48 but then stomped the Titans 67-42 in the Tier 1 final. Loyola will visit Trinity next Thursday (Oct. 22). King's trying to remain even-keeled The Cavaliers say they didn't care about ending Loyola's four-year unbeaten streak in Halton regular-season play, and they didn't care for how they did it either. "We weren't even happy with how we won. We felt we could still improve," said King's coach Eric Bulthuis. "We turned the ball over a lot and we missed some open shots." Any bragging rights the Cavaliers got from beating Loyola were gone the following day with their loss at Trinity. Again, Bulthuis didn't put that much stock in the result. "I think it's tough to go back-to-back against top teams... We're still looking at developing mentally to be ready to race big teams all the time," said the Cavs coach. "(Trinity) outplayed us, they took the ball to the basket, they were aggressive, they made shots and we didn't make shots. They were better than us, and we'll make sure that won't happen again." Not too high, not too low. It's the mentality of a team with not only lofty expectations, but also a large time window in which to reach them. Led by Amihere (a Grade 9 student who averaged 16.7 points per game in her first nine contests) and provincial teamer Christina Morra, and with just two Grade 12s on their roster, the Cavaliers feel their best years might still be to come. "We want to do as well as we can, especially with those two Grade 12 girls who have been with us a long time, but I see it all as development," said Bulthuis, who is assisted by former professional basketball player Zelimir Stevanovic, who he met while working at Stevanovic's International Basketball & Sports Academy (IBSA). Other young talents on the team are Mide Oriyomi and Tien Neale, who Bulthuis describes as "the best grads from local Christian schools we've had in a long time." Despite the fact that several of the Cavaliers' players -- including Amihere, who helped Canada win gold at this year's FIBA Americas under-16 women's tournament -- are from out of town, Bulthuis said the private school hasn't gone out of its way to recruit top-rated talent. "We haven't gone out and gotten players to come here," Bulthuis said. "Our academic standard is really drawing these kids in. They know they'll be academically challenged." Beyond Halton, the Cavaliers should have an easier road than Loyola and Holy Trinity. With approximately 600 students, King's is a AA-sized school and won't have to contend with St. Mary's and St. Thomas More on the road to OFSAA. Surgery, crashes, broken bones, flat tires. From the outside, it appeared Kyle Jones' triathlon season couldn't get much worse -- each flicker of hope being doused by a bucket of cold water. He made it back from off-season surgery only to have a rider crash in front of him, sending him over the handbars and breaking a bone in his back in March. That jeopardized his chances of competing in front of a home crowd at the Pan Am Games. But Jones made it back to race, only to have a fluke accident knock him out of the race. A strong showing at the Olympic test event was followed by another DNF at the world championships. Through it all, Jones knew how he was capable of performing. While the results may not have been flattering, he knew they would Kyle Jones eventually match his effort. "It can be kind of solitary, what we do," Jones said. "So much of the work is done out of the public eye. My training was still progressing well. It was only a matter of time." Jones' time finally arrived earlier this month in Cozumel, Mexico. Posting the day's fastest run time -- covering the 5-kilometre course in 14 minutes, 51 seconds -- Jones took second place behind South Africa's Richard Murray. It was his best International Triathlon Union result since his World Cup victory in Edmonton in 2012. "It's been a season full of ups and downs," Jones said. "Every season has its ups and downs but there were more setbacks than usual." Perhaps the toughest was the Pan Am Games. After working his way back into shape following the bike crash in New Zealand three months earlier, Jones was riding in the lead group when another rider hit a cone marking the course into Jones' tire, causing it to go flat. After so much build up to the race, Jones said this time it was tougher on him mentally than the physical challenges he had faced earlier in the season. "I had a chance to be on the podium. It was amazing to see so many friends and family at the race. You want to perform for them. And not that I felt like I let them down, but they want to see you do well and you want to do well for them," he said. "It took a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, but you've got to pick up and move on. You can't get stuck in that rut." Jones followed up the Pan Am Games with his most promising result of the season, placing 18th in the Olympic test event in Rio against a field similar to the one that will compete there next summer. A couple of tough races followed -- a 49th-place finish at a World Cup in Edmonton and another DNF at the grand final in Chicago after his legs cramped during the run. Jones' body wasn't the only thing to take a beating this year. His world ranking also plummeted. From a one-time high of 15th, Jones dropped out of the top 100 after missing much of the season not finishing half of the six races he competed in. He needed a late wild card berth to get into the grand final in Chicago, finding out just days before the race and scrambling to get a flight. But Jones continued to persevere through his trying season and finally got his reward Sunday. "The last four weeks, things have really come around. Fitness-wise, I was in good shape. I wasn't tired. I was able to go in and execute. It wasn't `Does this hurt, does that hurt,'" the 30-year-old said. "It was a big confidence booster." -- Herb Garbutt