The Carpenter High School girls basketball team heads to HOOPLA this weekend with a chance win back-to-back championships (Submitted Photo/Kendra Paramchuk)

By Austin Mattes

Carpenter High School Basketball

Meadow Lake girls head to HOOPLA with chance at back-to-back

Mar 20, 2025 | 1:36 PM

It’s been a great season so far for the Carpenter High School Spartans girl’s basketball team and after coming off a 4A provincial championship last season, they’ve continued their success, winning four tournaments throughout their 2024/25 campaign.

Now, after beating Melfort in regionals, the Spartans are heading to HOOPLA this weekend and just like last season, are trying to go for it all, said Spartans Head Coach Kendra Paramchuk.

“We’ve had an excellent season, we’ve got a young bunch of young girls and we’ve got a lot of talent and we’ve had a lot of success. We won provincials last year, so for our girls, we set a goal to make it to HOOPLA and then now that we’ve made it, we’re trying to repeat if we can and take some hardware home,” she said.

Coming into the season though, despite winning provincials the year prior, there was a lot of unknown for the team. With a good number of senior players leaving, Paramchuk wasn’t sure how things would go with the younger core group of players. Then as the season began and the wins started coming, the unknown faded quickly.

“We lost four key grade 12’s and we didn’t really know how the season would go just with our young players, but as the season went on, we’ve saw a full squad with lots of talent and as a coach it’s a tough problem to have when you have so many good athletes to try and get them in, so we’ve been able to use our depth, our size and skills to wear down teams and be successful,” said Paramchuk.

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Going into the weekend, things will look a little different than they did last year as HOOPLA was on a hiatus and boiled down to just a one-day event due to the dispute between the Government of Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation.

That made coming into this season a whole other level of excitement for the team as it gave them a chance to experience something they missed out on last season.

“I think our girls are excited to play, they’re prepared and they’re just looking forward to having the HOOPLA experience that everybody works so hard during the season to get to,” said Paramchuk

The Spartans will take on Moose Jaw Central in their first game and even though they beat them earlier in the year, Paramchuk expects a tough matchup.

She said that the biggest factor for the team’s success will be their depth and mentality.

“We’ve had some success against them at their tournament in January, but lots changes for teams as the season goes on. We got to take advantage of our bench and size, get the ball inside early, hopefully draw some fouls and get our posts on the glass. We’ve also been working a lot on the mental side of sport and trying to not let the outside factors affect us and I think the mental side will come once we get into the game,” said Paramchuk.

Tip off for the first game against MJ Central is Friday, March 21, 6:30 p.m. at the Bethlehem Catholic High School.

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Austin.mattes@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @AustinMattes