Orangeville girls bring back gold from Canadian basketball championships

August 22, 2024   ·  
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By Brian Lockhart

Two Orangeville basketball players have returned home with gold medals after competing in the Canadian Basketball Championships in St. John’s, Newfoundland Aug. 5-10.

Emma Firth competed with U15 Team Ontario. Ayla Corrigale is a member of the U17 Team Ontario squad.

Both girls went through a try-out and qualifying rounds and were chosen for their provincial teams.

The Championships are represented by the best basketball players from nine provinces that compete for the title.

Emma’s team went undefeated through the tournament and won the gold with a score of 80-39 over Team Quebec in the final game.

“It was good, it was the top competition in Canada. There were a lot of good players,” Emma said of competing at the championships. “It was a well-run tournament. Our team was really good.”

The U15 Team Ontario cruised through most of their games winning by a good margin, except the Quebec team who gave them a real battle.

“In the final game, were up by a few points at the half,” Emma said. “We played five games.”

Team Ontario pulled ahead in the second half to win and claim the championship.

The U17 Ontario team also went undefeated in the tournament. They won the championship with a 55-45 win over Quebec in the final game.

Ayla was actually playing a year up with older players in the tournament.

“The tournament was really cool,” Ayla said of playing at a national level. “I was playing a year up so I wanted to see how the players from other provinces were, compared to me. It was a fun experience to play against top players that I’ve never played against before. We had never played any of these teams so we were just watching the film of their game before they played us. The competition was amazing – it was good. In the final game, we had played them before but only beat them by one point. We had a real game plan going into the final. It was a very positive experience.”

Both girls said they enjoyed the experience of meeting other players from across the country.

Ontario swept the championships this year with both boys and girls teams winning their divisions. This is the first time this has happened since Quebec ruled the court in 2019.

The boy’s competition was held in Toronto.