The Holy Cross Collegiate Senior Boys basketball team has a strong foundation this year with many of the members from the squad that played in provincials last year. These young athletes want to repeat the success this year also.  Suffering some bumps in the road, they were off to a rocky start when they lost their first home game 83 to 80 against Notre Dame Collegiate out of High River.  Head Coach Joshua Jalbert relays the events that lead to that loss, "I would say that we put ourselves in a bad situation earlier by making just simple mental mistakes, and that is why we were down so much earlier. I would say that we are a stronger team. It's just the mistakes that cost us earlier in the game."

That is all behind them and the HCC team is back for redemption as they play their Invitational Tournament this weekend.  They have seen a number of their core players leave since last year, but the vast majority of their key players, and leaders, especially their Grade 11 students have been really helping the younger players with their games.  

Jalbert talks about the level of excitement and energy the team will be putting into this showing, "it is really exciting we have our home tournament coming up and I think the boys are expecting that we are in the finals and are competing for gold at the end of the tournament.  Yeah, it should be interesting to see how we perform this weekend."

Eight teams have been invited to the tournament that is of similar skill and size, so it should be a good indicator of how zones might turn out.  Holy Cross Collegiate will play their first game against Prairie Christian Academy from Three Hills on Friday at 2:30 p.m.  If the Hawks are successful in that effort, they will play again on Saturday at noon.