A season to remember
Horton Griffins wins Division 1 girls’ provincial championship
Caitlyn Davis smiles when she looks at the provincial banner her Horton Griffins won this year.
The memories from a remarkable year that culminated in a School Sport Nova Scotia Division 1 basketball championship will last a lifetime. And the smiles are sure to come back to the players’ faces as they enter the gym in years to come and spot the banner they worked so hard to earn.
“I’m so proud of all my teammates and what we accomplished this year,” said Davis, a Grade 12 student from Kentville. “We all contributed and we all played our parts and it was amazing to celebrate at the end with all my teammates.”
The Griffins defeated the Halifax West Warriors 65-46 March 3 in Sydney Mines in a matchup of the two topranked teams in the province.
Head coach Meghan MacLeod said she was proud of the girls’ accomplishments and how close the team was.
“I think our team cohesiveness and our team chemistry was off the chart this year,” she said.
It is Horton’s fourth Division 1 provincial girls’ basketball banner since 1969.
“A lot of people don’t realize how difficult it is to get to the finals in a provincial championship and to win it,” said MacLeod, who was a Grade 10 member of the last Horton team to win the banner in 2015-16.
The Griffins had finished second in 2022 and third in 2023. Davis, who was on both of those teams, said the players knew how rare it was for their school to win the provincial title.
“A lot of us have played together for a long time and have been working towards this goal. We knew how big of a deal it was and we wanted to win so bad. We were able to come together and pull it off.”
Horton, which returned its lineup from 2023, entered provincials as the No. 1 seed after compiling a 30-4 record. They won all three games at provincials, but it was far from easy.
“We’ve had our close games and those have prepared us for the (championship) weekend,” said Davis. “It wasn’t easy. We put a lot of work into it, but it paid off for us in the end.”
MacLeod remembers speaking with the team’s three graduating players, Rachel Veale, Ali Oluyole
and Davis, before the tournament tipped off.
“I could tell from the very start of the weekend how focused those three were and how much they wanted not only to be in that final game but to win that final game,” she recalled. “I think their leadership was really influential.”
SEMIFINAL
Horton erased a 17-point second quarter deficit in the semifinal to defeat the defending-champion Auburn Drive Eagles 71-67.
Auburn held quarter leads of 22-12, 39-29 and 57-51.
“We didn’t start out how we would like to but the whole game we were picking each other up and we weren’t going to give up until the final buzzer went off,” Davis said. “We knew how important it was to stick together.”
MacLeod said she was proud that the girls refused to give up and found ways to get back into the game by playing the style of basketball that made them successful.
“I think that really helped us going into the final, having that tough game under our belts,” she said. “Knowing we can overcome adversity was really important.”
The Eagles led by seven points with two minutes to play when the Horton veterans took over.
“The last two minutes were the craziest two minutes of basketball I’ve ever played,” Davis explained. “It didn’t feel real at all. On the floor, we were all just so locked in.”
Veale got Oluyole the ball for a jumper to cut the deficit to five with 1:50 to play. Veale stole the ball and made it a three-point game with a layup. After an Auburn timeout, Isobel MacDonald took a charge and Davis hit a trey to tie the game with 30 seconds to play in regulation.
After a Horton stop and timeout, MacDonald grabbed an offensive rebound and scored to give the Griffins a lead for the first time since early in the game.
An Auburn player would miss two free throws while Oluyole hit two to ice the game.
While many teams facing such a large deficit would have folded, the Griffins didn’t.
“We knew that this was our last weekend playing as a team and we knew that we had to play for each other and do whatever it took and we weren’t going to give up,” Davis said.
Oluyole paced the Griffins with 21 points and six rebounds while MacDonald had a double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds.
Davis scored 14 points, Veale had nine points, six boards and four assists and
Lily Walsh contributed seven points, four rebounds and three dimes.
After the game, the team had to quickly shift gears and refocus on the goals they had set for the season.
“While it was certainly a big check mark and an exciting check mark, there was still one more box that needed to be knocked off,” MacLeod said.
FINAL
The Griffins and Warriors had played four games before the final with Horton winning three times.
Davis said they didn’t want to fall behind in the championship game and came out firing against Halifax West.
Eva O’Brien led the Griffins with 20 points, including 11 in the second quarter when the Griffins grew their lead from two to 12 points. Oluyole had 15 points, seven rebounds and three assists while MacDonald had 12 points, two assists and a rebound. Veale hauled in a team-high 11 boards while dishing out a team-leading eight assists to go with seven points. Adi Lockhart contributed seven points and nine rebounds and Walsh chipped in six assists, three points and two boards.
Horton held 13-11, 33-21 and 51-36 quarter leads.
Davis said they were fortunate to play for such a great coaching staff, which included Graysen Parker and MacLeod’s father Dwayne.
“They are amazing,” she said. “They prepared us so well for the weekend and the whole
prepare season. They pushed us to us and they had full confidence in us the whole season.”