The student athletes of RancheView School are celebrating the success of a victorious school season with both the Junior A girls’ and boys’ basketball teams winning their respective 2A divisions.
This marks the first time that the girls’ team brought home the banner, while this will be the fourth consecutive time that the boys win their banner. This follows the success of the girls’ volleyball team, which secured their first-ever divisional banner in November of last year.
RancheView School’s athletic director, Graham Selwood, explained that the school has slowly been building their sports program. Through the work of incredible volunteer coaches, he said it helped paved the way for their last successful four years.
“It was a pretty big year for all the kids and coaches alike,” he said.
With a smaller school population, Selwood explained that their division was based on the number of Grade 7 and 8 students.
“When we have a team, we might have 40 boys try out for our junior high basketball team, and there’s only 60 eligible boys,” he said. “It’s a big contingent of the school’s population that’s involved. Everybody is highly engaged.”
He adds that although there are often times that tough cuts are made, he said that the entire student body will often rally behind their teams. From in-house tournaments, to celebrating successes, Selwood said the students are always electric.
“It was pretty fun for both teams to come home, and the next school day things were definitely buzzing,” Selwood said. “All the players were talking to their friends, and all the coaches and teachers were quite excited. It’s been really fun.”
After watching the genesis of their sports program, Selwood said it is amazing to see it constantly evolve. Another highlight he witnessed is the development of a strong sports culture within the halls of RancheView School.
“These seasons definitely have a beginning, middle, and end, but the presence of basketball and volleyball in the school is a thing that’s all year long, so it’s really exciting,” Selwood said. “The great thing about athletics that I love is that there’s different friend groups. Kids who might not interact otherwise, you know, put in the hard work and over the course of a few months come together and become quite a tight team. That’s pretty fun to see.”
Looking to the future, Selwood said that RancheView School plans keep developing their athletics program, while also trying to keep the barrier of entry for students as low as possible.
“We try to keep things as reasonable as we can, and just growing the numbers of participants will inevitably foster our future success,” Selwood said. “Banners are awesome and they’re super fun to win, but lessons can be learned from both sides of wins and losses.
“For me, it’s having as many kids participate as possible. If they want to play, I’ll find them coaches and it’s only up from there.”
