Lasalle's Kristine Lalonde and Lockerby's Tiye Traore have both made the Girls' Provincial Basketball Teams in their respective age categories after final tryouts were held in Hamilton this past weekend.
Both girls were invited to their final tryouts, by invite only, after attending open try-outs in Toronto earlier last month.
More than 30 of the best girls in Ontario competed for a spot on each team. Usually, the Provincial teams are selected from Basketball Ontario's JDP & MDP camps and competitions taking place in early July. These camps are still scheduled to run this summer but the MDP North Regional team (one of 12 regional teams) will compete at the Summer Games in August.
The JDP camp will once again use a draft format, which will see six teams compete against one another. A second U-17 Girls Development Provincial Team will be selected from the JDP camp, which will tour the USA and compete in two select tournaments during the summer.
Lalonde has made the Provincial Team for the fifth time, this time as a member of the U-17 Juvenile Girls Basketball Team.
The Grade 11, 16-year-old, five-foot-ten point guard is a veteran to the team after being one of only three under aged players on the team last year.
For the fourth time, she will travel to the National Championships, to be held this summer in Charlottetown, P.E.I., for the U-17 Juvenile Championships August 19-23.
Lalonde has three gold National Championship medals to her credit and will try to make it number four.
The team will also travel to Chicago, Illinois for the Annual Chicago Showcase Tournament, where the best teams in the USA will compete and hundreds of NCAA scouts will be present.
Lalonde plays for Lasalle Secondary and has been to the OFSAA senior girls' championships three years running since Grade 9. She has played club ball for the Sudbury Lakers, Sudbury Canstars, the Sudbury Selects and recently finished eighth in the province as a member of the Junior Vees U-17 Club team.
She has attended Sudbury's Regional Training Centre and also been a member of Basketball Canada's Elite Centre of Performance for the past four years, which identifies elite athletes with potential. Lalonde will attend the Junior National Team Tryouts within the next few weeks.
Traore has cracked the provincial roster for the first time and
will play on the U-15 Midget Provincial Team as they compete in
Kamloops, B.C., Aug. 5-9 at Thompson Rivers
University.
The U-15 team will also travel to Chicago, Illinois to compete in the Annual Chicago Showcase Tournament, whereby the team will declare two alternates.
The 14-year-old, Grade 9 student plays for the Lockerby senior girls' team. She has played on the Sudbury Laker Basketball Club team for the past three years. Traore is a five-foot-eleven, strong forward.
She has attended Sudbury's Regional Training Centre and been a member of Basketball Canada's Elite Centre of Performance for the past two years.
Both Traore and Lalonde will travel down south for training camps with their respective teams, beginning the end of June, before they compete in the Canadian National Championships.
