The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Wednesday, November 29, 2000 THE OAKVILLE BEAVER D1 An O akville Beaver Feature Editor: N O R M N ELSO N Phone:845-3824, ex t 255 Fax:337-5567 E-mail:n n elso n @ haltonsearch.com Aquinas shocks #1 ranked S t M ary's, but is still ranked #2 at the provincials By Norm Nelson BEAVER SPORTS ED ITO R Photo by Barrie Erskine In last week's Halton final, won by Aquinas 60-35 over Burlington's Notre Dame, the Raiders' Karen Zmirak leaps high for the ball. Zmirak is one of two Grade Nine students to crack the line-up, the other being Kara Lang. The St. Thomas Aquinas Raiders are heading into the OFSAA provin cial basketball championships as the second ranked team in the province. And that's after defeating the top ranked team, and defending provincial champion, St. Mary's of Hamilton, 4443 in last Friday's regional Golden Horseshoe Athletic Conference (GHAC) championship game. It marked St. Mary's first loss in three years. Whether there's a an asterisk beside it, is anyone's guess. All that was on the line, after all, was pride. And that's because G-HAC is host ing the OFSAA (Ontario Federation of Secondary School Athletic Associations) provincial championship in Hamilton, Thursday through Saturday. And as hosts they get to field two teams, so as is traditional, both the Halton and Hamilton Roman Catholic champions (Aquinas and St. Mary's respectively) get automatic entries, instead of having to fight it out in what is usually a sudden death G-HAC final. It was sudden death last year and Aquinas ended up losing by five points to top ranked St. Mary's who then went on to win the provincial championship. Aquinas may very well have been second ranked. Whatever meaning you want to attach to this year's G-HAC champi onship, it was exciting. With nine seconds left, Aquinas were down by two points and they called a time-out. They came out with a set play to get the ball to Alana Juzenas, their provincial guard, and on her way to the basket she was fouled with 3.8 seconds left. Woosh, went her first attempt, leav ing Aquinas just one point behind. But her second attempt missed and the rebound was grabbed by a St. Mary's player. Juzenas, however, stole the ball and went up for a buzzer-beating lay up, giving St. Thomas Aquinas the one-point win. Controversial transfer Katie Donovan, a national team member, led the well rounded Aquinas scoring attack with a dozen points. Aquinas had led by as much as 10 points in the first half before St. Mary's decided they'd better start to Photos by Riziero Vertolli H O C K E Y M O R N IN G IN C A N A D A : in this Oakville Hornets tyke house league hockey game last Saturday morning, the red team (Zellers) defeated the white team (Wheels International) 8-5. In the top left photo, an unidentified Zellers player pauses for some water. In the top right and bottom photos, Victoria Procyk of Wheels International (#11) shows some offensive flare. She led her team with four goals while All McCormick had the other marker. Rachel Canham had four goals for Zellers while Jessy Korosi and Jessica Weaver had one (the other two goals were unattributed). REP REPORTS, PG D2 take an interest in the game. "They fought back. They turned it up defensively," said coach Johnston. Needless to say, neither team went too deep into their bench. Exactly what it all means, we asked Aquinas coach Mike Johnston: "We're G-HAC champions. We won G-HAC outright," he said. Beyond that it gets murky. The powers that be obviously did n't read too much into it as they still ranked St. Mary's ahead of Aquinas. Coach Johnston said he received quite a few comments from people wondering how Aquinas could defeat the top ranked school in a legitimate conference championship -- and not take over the number one ranking. But he was also very diplomatic about it. "I understand. I would probably rank us the same way. They (St. Mary's) are the defending provincial champions, they've lost one game in three years." Of course, he can afford to be diplomatic; there's really no reason to press the point. Yes, St. Mary's are at the top of the draw, but Aquinas are at the bottom, which is dam near as good, because it means they won't have to run into St. Mary's until the final championship game, assuming, of course, that both teams avoid an upset. And the Raiders' win, even if it didn't get them the number one rank ing, certainly cemented their number two status (which is important when you consider that the third ranked team is in the top half of the draw with St. Mary's). To be honest, the Raiders team, prior to their G-HAC win over St. Mary's, had pegged themselves in at second, any way. While the win was great for the program, great for rankings and great for bragging rights, it also means they're now marked. "We may have awakened a sleeping giant," he said, chuckling. Not that they're even worried about that at the moment "Every team will be pulling out all the stops against us, every game. We can't afford to look beyond LaSalle (their first round opponent from Sudbury)." RAIDERS RAMBLINGS With their win over St. Mary's at the OFSAA provincial championship, Aquinas not only improved their over all record to 35-2 but managed to put the best possible spin on their two losses. Their two losses were to Lourdes of Guelph and St. Mary's -- the defend ing OFSAA silver and gold medalists, respectively. But in each case, Aquinas came back to avenge each loss with a win. Outside of those two tournament losses, Aquinas won four other tourna ments it played in -- the Notre Dame tip-off, McGill University, Brantford Assumption and John Paul of London. OFSAA SCHEDULE The OFSAA tournament format allows for an opening round loss but it's sudden death after that. Aquinas opens Thursday, 4:15 p.m., at. St. Mary's High School against Sudbury LaSalle. Should Aquinas win the opening game, they would play their sudden death second round game Friday, 1 p.m. (at St. Mary's). If they managed to stave off upsets they would play a (See 'Aquinas' pape D2) I I M M Here' s what we'll do: UPPER OAKVltlCE^ SHOPPING CENTRE J p p e rM j3 d J e < a : £ T . Jk ^ V A Jk SHOPPING m ! S S i %arr Offer applies to all installed services in our Auto Centre excluding tires and batteries. Minimum invoice cost: $150. Applicable taxes will be applied to the discounted price. *M osl vehicles