The Boissevain Broncos brought home the championship banner from the Provincial “A” High School Varsity Girls Basketball Championship.

The Broncos held on for a 62-58 nail-biting victory over the Shevchenko Sabres Saturday afternoon in Rosenort.

“That was stressful,” said Boissevain coach Keith Forsyth shortly after the trophy and banner presentations. “It was fun. I told the kids before the game make sure you enjoy it, win or lose, because it doesn’t happen very often. It was a great atmosphere and that was a very good team we were playing.”

The Broncos, who led by 12 with eight minutes left, were hanging on to a two-point lead over the Vita school late in the fourth quarter when Raylin Unrau drained a jumper with 24.7 seconds left to increase Boissevain’s lead to 62-58.

Coach Forsyth said that basket was huge.

“Anytime you can get up by four and make it a two possession game - and they have the best shooter (Megan Wiebe) I’ve ever seen in high school basketball - that was big. With 24 seconds left I told our manager, ‘I don’t feel good about this.’ We got the steal, a nice turnover, and Raylin made a basket which probably was the biggest basket of her life.”

Wiebe finished the game with 27 points but only had four in the final 10 minutes.

For the entire fourth quarter Forsyth had Madde Billaney guard the Provincials MVP all the way up the court after Wiebe inbounded the ball.

“We did that basically because Trinity Billaney had three fouls and Madde had one and we just said, ‘Where she goes, you go.’ All the scouting reports of teams that played her said that’s basically the only way to stop her is to keep the ball out of her hands. We did a pretty good job of that, not as good as I would like, but she’s very good.”

Anja Nell and Sarah Hallett had 15 points each for the Broncos while Raylin Unrau added 13 and Madde Billaney had 10. Hallett, Unrau and Billaney were named to the All-Star Team.

“This is as good as we play,” said Forsyth. “It’s been a really funky year for us. We haven’t had the same starting lineup in a tournament twice. We had an exchange student from Australia who was a fantastic player and she left in January. Madde Billaney didn’t come back until January from ACL surgery. Trinity Billaney had two concussions in December and January so the amount of improvement in this team over the last six weeks has been phenomenal. Sarah Hallett and Aurora Holstein are in grade 10 and our bench is grade 9’s. If you told me at the start of the year this would happen I would have said, ‘Alright, let's see.”


Clayton Dreger asked Broncos guard Madde Billaney how it felt to win the Provincial "A" Championship banner