Things have come full circle for a local basketball coach.
Springbank High School teacher Katherine Adams once played for the Alberta provincial team and is now stepping behind the bench for the U15 girls team for the 2013 season.
“It’s a really great opportunity,” Adams said.
“I’m excited to have the chance to work with the best U15 girls in the province. I’m not exactly a stranger to the basketball program so I thought it would be a great opportunity to represent the province and compete for a national championship.”
Adams has been involved in basketball since she was a teenager, playing throughout high school. She won a national championship with the provincial U17 team in 1999. After she graduated from Sir Winston Churchill High School in Calgary, she was recruited to play for the University of Calgary and spent five seasons with the Dinos.
After university, she took a year off to travel but when she returned home, she delved back into basketball and began her coaching career.
She returned to Winston Churchill for her first season behind the bench before taking a job at Springbank High School last year.
“I fell in love with it,” she said. “I love seeing the athletes’ desire to improve and achieve excellence and work hard. I love the sport and it’s great to be involved in something that I’m so passionate about.”
The process for choosing the provincial team began early this year with two separate tryouts in Calgary and Edmonton. Eighty young basketball players tried out and that number was whittled down to 30. Those 30 were invited to a second camp and from there, Adams and her assistants, John Dedrick and Claire Meadows finalized their roster of 12 players and two redshirts.
“We had some very, very tough decisions,” Adams said. “The U15 age group is still so raw and there’s so much room for growth. We’re definitely not very big, but we’ve got a group of girls who work hard and are athletic. We’re going to be a very exciting team to watch and we’ll have to force teams to make mistakes and capitalize on that. It’s going to be a fun style to watch, coach and play.”
The team will train a few weekends every month between now and July, but in the summer, the training will intensify to where the team is practicing together four to five times a week in preparation for the Canada Basketball National Championships.
The tournament is being held in St. Johns, N.L. Aug. 4 to 11.
Adams said it will be an eye opening experience for many of the players as U15 is the first age group that allows players to compete in at the national level.
“It’s an exciting opportunity especially for some of these girls who haven’t travelled that far East,” she said.
“It’s the first time they’ll have to competed against the best. We have a group of girls who are the best on their club teams, but now they’re going to compete against the best from around the country.
“We need to take advantage of the opportunity, go out and give it our all even though it sounds cliché. With all the hard work we’re going to put in, it’s going to be our opportunity to shine and showcase our style of basketball. Anything can happen and we need to be ready to compete.”
