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Momo’s Depth Key To Third Straight Provincial Title
Championship MVP – Maude Archambault
The Montmorency Nomades made easy work of Ste Foy Dynamiques, winning 55-33 to claim the school’s third straight RSEQ, Division 1 title.
“C’est merveilleux!!” (- It’s marvelous!) claimed Nomades Head Coach, Martin Fortier. “Incredible!!”
“The girls really battled hard right from the beginning of the game and rise to the occaision. To get all this to happen in my first year…it’s fantastic…just excellent”, claimed a jubilant Coach that was beaming from with obvious excitement.
Right from the opening tip, the Montmorency took went right to work in defence of the same title that they won last year, and really stifled the Dynamiques with a ton of pressure that they just couldn’t overcome.
“Seriously, what we did was we reviewed quite a bit of game tape from their game against Dawson yesterday”, said Fortier of how he planned for the win. “Defensively, we adopted a plan in preparation for what we saw in the video. We worked out the Xs and Os in the locker for 15-20mins prior to coming out for warm ups and everything fell into place.”
“The girls came out sharp. We held them to just 3 points in that first quarter. We had a feeling that what we did defensively, would be 80% of our success.”
One of the defensive game plans that one would have thought that they would have had to consider was finding a solution for Ste Foy’s Julie Dufresne. Dufresne, a UQAM commit for this Fall, had a major impact in their semi-final game to the tune of 15 points.
But, Fortier insisted that special attention was not paid to any one player. It was the system that was implemented that was the key to the victory.
“We didn’t have a game plan for her. The way that we set up our defence was one that we constantly switched up. In doing that, she was unable to get any penetration. At times she was switched up against our bigs, with help in the A-gap.”
“We did not have a plan for one player. We had a plan for Ste Foy. That is Momo’s strength. We rely on all five of our players on the court.”
Geraldine Cabillo-Abante, Nadege Pluvoise, Julie Brosseau
Interestingly enough, the Nomades’ Maude Archambault was named the playoffs MVP. It is not that she didn’t deserve the honor, because she actually played very well. But is was the fact that Archambault received the honour, and is not even a part of their starting line up which spoke volumes.
“That only confirms that we have incredible depth”, he said of the depth of his team and the fact that every player on the roster played double digits in minutes. “Every player received significant minutes in a Championship final. Could you really ask for more?”
“It really feels good. It was really good to win on our home court”, added semi-final player of the game, Nadege Pluvoise. “We played well so I am very happy that we won.”
In keeping with the theme expressed by her Coach, Pluvoise was riding high on the fact that her team stepped up as one to accomplish the provincial title.
“We won, but we won as a team above all else. We not only came out and played our best game of the weekend, but this may have been our best game of the year.”
For now, the Nomades will take the next couple of days or so and bask in their victory. But, the celebration will be a short one. Coach Fortier has a much bigger prize in mind, collecting Gold at the CCAA National Championships on Vancouver Island on March 19.
“Before we got started here this weekend, then objective was always two fold for these couple of weeks”, he said of their ultimate goals this season. “One was winning the provincials, the other was winning a National Championship.”
“We’ve won the last two national titles, but were aware that we couldn’t try for three if we didn’t win here. Now that we have, we’ll look to our 4 veterans (Gladys Hakizimana, Ashley Milhomme, Geraldine Cabillo-Abante and Maude Archambault) have already had that experience. They’ll be able to share their experiences with the others.”
The proud Coach also went on to declare, “We have some exceptional rookies on the team as well. We just have a great mix. We’re going there to bring home a title!”
The Champlain Cavaliers won the Bronze Medal earlier in the day, after defeating the Dawson Blues 63-38.
