Viking boys to take part in Coal Bowl
The Coal Bowl Classic in New Waterford is not your typical high school basketball tournament, and two teams from the tri-counties – Yarmouth Consolidated Memorial High School and Shelburne Regional High School – will get to experience it this year.
The Shelburne Rebels, who are making their Coal Bowl debut, were the focus of a story in last week’s Vanguard. This week we turn our attention to YCMHS, a school that has been to the Coal Bowl before, but that was a while ago and so the tournament will be a new experience for this group of Viking players.
Yarmouth head coach Dana Andrews-Cunningham said the players are looking forward to the event, which takes place Feb. 5 to 10.
“It’s certainly a different tournament than they’re used to,” she said. “They’re used to just going and playing their games and then sitting around (waiting) to play their next game.”
Aside from the basketball action itself, there are educational and cultural components to the Coal Bowl.
“We’re also out in the community doing tours of the coal mines and museums and things, so it’s really not just an athletic event,” Andrews-Cunningham said. “There’s a concert, like a variety show, that each team has to have an act for.”
A wing of Breton Education Centre, the tournament’s host school, is converted to sleeping quarters for tournament participants.
“Each team has a room, a classroom,” Andrews-Cunningham said, adding female coaches and chaperones are billeted elsewhere. Yarmouth assistant coach Chuck Smith – who for many years was the YCMHS head coach and who has coached in the Coal Bowl before – will stay with the Viking players in their classroom-turned-dormitory.
The Coal Bowl, which began in the early 1980s, was not held last year because of the labour situation with Nova Scotia’s teachers.
Participating teams come from within and outside the province. This year’s entries include a school from Quebec and one from Alberta.
It’s perhaps ironic then – given the geographic reach of the Coal Bowl – that when the Vikings kick off the tournament at noon on Monday, Feb. 5, they will do so against a familiar opponent in Avon View High School of Windsor.
“Avon View’s in our league,” Andrews-Cunningham said. “We’ve played them quite frequently, so it was kind of humorous that we’re the opening game.”
The other tri-county entry in this year’s Coal Bowl – the Shelburne Rebels – will take the court next at 2 p.m. Monday against Hants North.
Playoff games are scheduled for Friday evening, Feb. 9, with the tournament wrapping up Saturday, Feb. 10, with the consolation game at noon and the title game at 2 p.m. Yarmouth’s Dylan Smith has the ball during a Jan. 16 home game against Horton. His Viking teammate Noah Wilcox, #12, is at the right of the picture. (Horton won the game 78-45.) The Vikings were scheduled to play host to Park View Thursday, Feb. 1, at 6 p.m. The YCMHS boys will be in Cape Breton for the Coal Bowl Classic the week of Feb. 5.