Team spirit
Students come from all over to play on Hurricanes
The Northside Hurricanes are a “Rep” basketball team that is made up of students from Memorial Composite High School, Sydney Mines Middle School, T. L. Sullivan Middle School and Munro Academy.
The Hurricanes are a girls’ team which has been in existence for three years. They play in Cape Breton and provincially with other under-16 teams. In the local area, there are three other teams in Sydney and one in Glace Bay. They also play offisland teams; in late May, they travel to New Brunswick to compete in the Moncton Classic.
Their coach is Travais Briand, their assistant coach is Mandy Hawley and their manager is Krista Fifoot. Briand started coaching in 2011 when he responded to the need for a coach for the Sydney Mines Junior High boys team. For the past seven year, he has been at it consistently, and for several years has had as many as three teams on the go at once. He was instrumental in establishing a league for the girls and had some assistance in all this from other community-minded citizens such as Albert Bonnar, LeeAnn MacNeil and Jack MacNeil.
Briand said that he and Hawley created the team three years ago after the school basketball season ended to keep them playing, and create a higher level of competition. By last fall, the team needed new uniforms, and were short of funds overall.
David Ashford, one of the parents,
approached Mike Johnson of the North Sydney Rotary Club for a donation, and after some discussion, the club agreed to sponsor the team completely, which included new uniforms for the Hurricanes’ players.
“One of the primary objectives of Rotary is to support youth and related programs within the Northside community,” said Johnson. “In that they represented students from four different schools but did not have other funding, the Hurricanes represented an opportunity to assist a diverse group of girls representing several different communities and schools.”
On February 13, I visited the team’s home court at Sydney Mines Junior High, and got a chance to meet all of the players, resplendent in their new attire. The colour scheme for the Hurricanes is black and white, with their name and logo on the front and “Northside Rotary Club” below the numbers on the back.
The girls were excited about their new uniforms, and strutted their stuff in a “shoot around” before posing for a team picture.
On February 8, several of the Hurricanes and their parents attended a Cape Breton Highlanders Basketball game, courtesy of general manager Tyrone Livingston.
On Sunday, February 18, the Hurricanes hosted the Sydney Magic team at 2 p.m. and the public, along with their parents and friends were encouraged to attend.
They have a few tournaments coming up; in April they compete in a basketball tournament in Sydney to aid children with cancer and later in May, they go to Moncton.
They fundraise by carrying out a bottle blitz in early March so they can purchase new track suits. M. M. Construction Ltd. provides general support for travel and other team expenses.