The Basketball Diaries: Lessons from the road with Ali and Chantelle

By Michela Fiorido [Sports Bureau Chief]

It all began Friday afternoon at one forty five in the Kwantlen parking lot. Two filthy rental vans picked us up and took us to the ferry terminals. Our first game was versus Quest University.
The game was okay. We started off shooting extremely well, thanks to our many three point shooters.

In the second quarter we let them back in the game, sharing basket for basket.

By the time the fourth quarter began we were back in the game with a solid lead and finished the game with a 74-60 win.
Currently many members of the Kwantlen women’s basketball team are either injured or sick and therefore are unable to play.
This leaves the team with only eight players which can be tiring and very interesting.

The Camosun game was one of those games. They have a deep bench and one player in particular who is very strong – scoring many of their points, despite our best efforts.
We came within two points of the Camosun Chargers but ended up losing by ten.

It seems every time we travel to Victoria we go to the same Tim Hortons which always seems to have a crowd outside of it.
This isn’t any crowd, it’s people and their cars, and we’re not talking hot rods.

Just normal cars with their hoods up and people talking and looking at engines. (Apparently there isn’t anything better to do in Victoria on a Friday night.)
Because of the quality of people that inhabit the Timmy’s parking lot our coaches thought it would be best to skip out on donuts this year.

We encountered a few more dodgy people on the ferry ride home.

First was a man who, from a distance, looked as if he had just taken a baseball bat to the head. His face was covered in bruises and cuts and his head was bandaged.
The odd thing was he was wearing a suit. The team was all taking bets whether the injuries were fake or real.

So one brave soul took it upon herself to walk by and take a really good look. Turns out they were fake, makes sense since Halloween is soon approaching, but still it’s pretty weird.
The next strange group of people on the ferry were three young men. They felt the need to stare down a few of us as we were innocently watching the Canucks game.

It was getting pretty intense so we ended up telling our assistant coach who somehow got them to clear out pretty quickly without ever getting out of his seat or saying a word.
Must have been a pretty intense look.

Well that’s what you get when you travel with the women’s b-ball team, until next time, Ali and Chantelle are over and out.