Skip to content

City champions

Alex Robichaud delivers when it counts.
133526_634340127255903348
Superior's Devan Drew (from left), Noel Parker and Tyler Asunmaa cherish the high school senior boy's basketball championship trophy Tuesday night. (Leith Dunick, TB Source)
Alex Robichaud delivers when it counts.

The Superior Collegiate guard scored 33 points on Tuesday night, out-scoring the entire Sir Winston Churchill Trojans team 24-20 in the first half alone, landing his Gryphons the senior high school boys basketball crown with a 54-40 win in enemy territory.

It was the first title of any kind in the school’s short two-year history.

“Winning a championship in any school is a tremendous feeling. Being the first one for Superior to win is a really good honour and I’m sure it will never be forgotten.”

Teammate Noel Parker, who hit six key free throws as time wound down to keep the pressure on the Trojan shooters, said it feels unreal to win it all.

“We’ve been working our asses off for four years and finally it pays off,” said Parker, one of half-a-dozen Gryphons who began their high-school basketball careers at the now-closed Hillcrest High School. “We get up every morning at 7:30 to come practice and it finally pays off.”

Robichaud arrived in Thunder Bay last fall via the Atlantic shores of New Brunswick, where he won a provincial championship in 2009, just one year after a horrific highway accident claimed the life of seven players on the 2008 Bathurst High School Phantoms squad.

Robichaud, who landed in Bathurst the season after the crash, said the first one was emotional, but this one is equally satisfying.

“It’s the same feeling winning a championship, either there or here, it’s the same feeling,” he said.

Rolling through the regular season undefeated, only to lose 67-35 to the Trojans last Friday in the first of two final games, was an eye-opener for the Gryphons, who realized the title they’d been dreaming about all season could easily be snatched away.

Destined for the Lakehead Thunderwolves next fall, with almost the entire LU squad there to watch their future teammate, Robichaud said the Gryphons weren’t about to let that happen.
“Our last game, we didn’t play too well. None of our shots were falling. So today we just wanted to come out with a lot of intensity and it just so happened that today my shots were falling,” Robichaud said.

He wasn’t kidding.

If the youngster put it up, it seemed to find the bottom of the net in the first half.

He drained a pair of threes in the first quarter and dropped three more in the second, staking Superior Collegiate to a 28-20 halftime advantage.

But basketball is a team game, and while the Trojans made some slight adjustments during the break, Robichaud and company found other ways to hurt their opponent in the second half.

“I made a lot of shots in the first half, so I knew they were going to try to double team me more or play defence. (My teammates) just happened to be open. It’s a team game so we have to try to get everybody involved.”

Jordan Abraham buried a three to start the third, and though Churchill pulled to within six points at the four minute mark when Brandon Myketa – who led his team with 13 – scored on a jumper, they couldn’t find a way to put a halt to the Gryphons offence.

Abraham hit another three to restore the lead to nine, then Robichaud, shut out in the third, made a delightful bounce pass to Devan Drew for a pair underneath to make it 36-25.

Robichaud got back on the board in a hurry, then after Churchill cut the lead to nine, but the Gryphons pulled away, finishing it at the free-throw line in the fourth.

“It was very tough,” said Churchill coach Cory Keeler.

“I just think it was a lot of costly turnovers on our part and we didn’t defend Alex very well and he shot great in the first half. We just didn’t recover from it, I guess.”

With the win the Gryphons advance to the NWOSSA final this weekend, which they will host against the winner of Tuesday night’s NORWOSSA final.


Leith Dunick

About the Author: Leith Dunick

A proud Nova Scotian who has called Thunder Bay home since 2002, Leith is Dougall Media's director of news, but still likes to tell your stories too. Wants his Expos back and to see Neil Young at least one more time. Twitter: @LeithDunick
Read more



push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks