Humber women’s basketball team wins championship in stunning way
With a last second shot, the Humber women’s basketball team won the 2016 Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association national championship, finishing the season with a perfect 24-0 record.
The women’s team defeated Prince Edward Island’s Holland College 50-49 and became the first major women’s basketball, soccer or volleyball team from the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association to win the national championship in its 38-year history.
Amber Bechard, a third-year shooting guard described the feeling of winning the national championship as, “an instant amazing rush. The feeling was just unforgettable and something that we will remember for the rest of our lives.”
Bechard and the rest of her teammates knew this year was their best shot to win the championship, as most of the players were nearing the end of their college careers.
Jim Bialek, manager of athletics for Humber, and partly responsible for building this team over the past five years, said the women’s team has been working hard to become national champions.
His colleague, James DePoe, Humber’s varsity coordinator said this accomplishment is something the school is very proud of. “It’s incredible. We’ve talked about it for a number of years.”
DePoe remembered his mentor and former coordinator of about thirty years, Doug Fox mentioned he wanted to see the women’s team win a national championship during his lifetime.
It is also special for coach Ajay Sharma, who remembered three years ago going to the national tournament with DePoe after the women’s team was eliminated in the provincial semi-finals. There, he and DePoe went to the tournament to see which improvements the team needed to compete at a high level. That is when Sharma changed his mentality of how to win games. “You can’t think, ‘we’re trying to win a provincial championship’ you have to prepare your team to win a national championship,” said Sharma.
Sharma, winner of the 2016 CCAA coach of the year award added, “we tried to make them [practices] as stressful and as game like as possible so the girls are comfortable in tough situations in games.”
Bialek added another reason why the women’s team played well was because they were surrounded by winners. This year Humber teams won a combined total of 18 provincial and national championships.
“You walk down the hall in the athletics building, and there is Johnny from the soccer team, he’s a national champion. There is Olivia from the badminton team, she is a national champion. You surround yourself with winners,” Bialek said.
As for next year, Sharma doesn’t want to set unreachable goals for his team, but said they will try to compete for a provincial championship and build from that.
Sometimes “players don’t trust what the coaches say. If you say ‘we’re going to win a national championship next year’ and you don’t, they start to not believe again,” said Sharma.
DePoe added, “it’s hard to have that expectation [winning a national championship] because anything can happen. I think we have a good program here at Humber, I think we have great support for all our teams.”
*Photo courtesy of Humber College’s twitter account, @HumberHawks.
About the Author
Anthony Gallo Is a third year Media Studies student at the University of Guelph-Humber. He hopes to one day work in a newsroom, delivering his take on sports.