It was one heck of a busy yet rewarding week for Lucky Toor at the Langley Events Centre.
Toor guided the Seaquam Seahawks to the B.C. Junior Girls Basketball Invitational Tournament title with a dominating 50-20 win over the South Kamloops Titans in Saturday’s championship game. It was Seaquam’s first provincial hoop crown in school history.
Toor also happens to be coach of the senior girls team too that ended up 13th at the 4A level in its first provincial appearance in 30 years.
It all adds up to more promising seasons ahead for the Sunshine Hills school.
The juniors showed why they have been at or near the top of the provincial rankings since December with four straight victories to capture the 24-team event.
Easy wins over St. Thomas More (50-25) and Pacific Academy (52-27) set the stage for a thrilling semi-final with the Yale Lions.
Syra Toor scored 12 of her team-high 18 points in the fourth quarter as the Seahawks prevailed 52-48 over their Abbotsford opponent.
The championship game was a defensive struggle with Seaquam leading South Kamloops 21-10 at the half then pulling away in the third quarter, led by Syra again, to open up a 43-17 lead. The Grade 8 standout finished with 22 points and was named the tournament’s MVP.
“The way I look at it, we have multiple MVPs on our team and on any given day at any given tournament, it could be any one of them. And she showed up in the biggest moments and that was yesterday and today. Super proud of her as a coach, but obviously – haven’t let it sink in – but super proud of her as a father as well,” said Lucky.
His year older daughter Priya was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Defensive Player while Sydney Roufosse earned Championship Player of the Game honours thanks mostly to her work on the glass, hauling in 14 rebounds.
“We had this vision, but you don’t know what’s out there and where you stand. I knew we had a hard working bunch and a very strong team, but we did have this vision from day one and for them to realize it is pretty special,” added Lucky.
Additional individual awards went to Neelum Sidhu (first team all-star) and Camryn Tait (second team all-star).
The team also features Callie Brost, Hamina Gill, Sabrina Pietraroia, Anika Dass, Sukman Brar and Rana Amarkhill.
