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Sports Oakville Beaver SPORTS EDITOR:JONKUIPERIJ Phone 905-845-3824 (ext. 432) Fax 905-337-5571 email sports@oakvillebeaver.com · FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2012 29 PHOTOS SUBMITTED NO FEAR: The Oakville Crusaders' top under-12 team (pictured above) won a Provincial U12 rugby gold The Oakville Crusaders Rugby Club's top under-12 team went undefeated to win gold at the recent provincial championships in Markham. Oakville locked up the Ontario title with a win over Oshawa, a team that beat Oakville in the 2011 final. Oakville outscored Oshawa 7-5 in tries. Members of the U12 Oakville provincial rugby championship recently in Markham. In right photo, Oakville's Andrew Easson (left) and Jack Shaw team up to tackle a much larger Oshawa opponent. team are Andrew Deligero, Andrew Easson, Declan Finerty, Ethan Froats, Jack Shaw, Aiden Muldoon, Sela Caskenette, Kanishka Almeida and Keelan Froats. John Easson coaches the squad. The Crusaders' top U8 and U10 teams also played games at provincials, though no official score was kept in those contests. Loyola girls shooting high once again By Herb Garbutt OAKVILLEBEAVERSTAFF NIKKI WESLEY / OAKVILLE BEAVER / @HALTON_PHOTOG (23) hoists a shot during Wednesday's Halton senior girls basketball game against the Nelson Lords. LAYING UP: Jaelyne Kirkpatrick of the Loyola Hawks It's said that winning is the best recruiting tool. Yet, despite ending Notre Dame's sixyear run as Halton senior girls basketball champions last year, the Loyola Hawks had just seven players when they reconvened to defend their title this fall. The Hawks lost a number of graduating seniors and another player was lost for the season to a knee injury before they ever hit the court. The Hawks brought up two players from the junior team to round out the lineup but there are still some challenges with such a small roster. With only seven players available for a weekend tournament in St. Catharines, Loyola found itself in foul trouble in the final. Loyola played the last five minutes with only four players and still led with a minute to play -- until another player fouled out. Though it ended up losing, Loyola has shown there is strength in numbers, no matter how small those numbers might be. The Hawks opened the Halton regular season Wednesday with a convincing 52-22 win over Nelson -- a team that finished above the .500 mark last season. The Hawks' new coach, Tina De Carvalho, has the team focusing their efforts on playing a tight defensive game. And you know the standards are high when she says "the defence could have been better in the fourth quarter," a period in which the Hawks gave up just eight points. Perhaps the Loyola players have themselves to blame for setting the bar so high by surrendering just a single point in the opening quarter. In all, Nelson managed just seven field goals in the entire game. While the Hawks don't swarm their opponents with a press, they still get more than their share of turnovers with a knack for picking off passes. Jaelyne Kirkpatrick, a Grade 10 student, is particularly effective breaking up opposition plays. To label the Hawks as a team that relies on defence to compensate for a lack of offence would be wrong, though. Loyola led 16-1 after the first quarter and could have had 20 had it capitalized on a couple of more opportunities created by turnovers. Sam Pocrnic, who scored the winning basket in last year's Halton final, set the tone early with a three-pointer. Point guard Sarah Traynor also showed no hesitation to put up a shot from beyond the arc. She almost outscored Nelson by herself, finishing with a game-high 20 points, including six three pointers. The Hawks get scoring from throughout the lineup, though. Emily Wilk had 11 points, while Kirkpatrick and Pocrnic each had eight. "We all have different things to give," Traynor said. "Emily is great at everything, Alex (Ruscica) is our big, Sam runs the floor and Jaelyne is a good fighter; she terrorizes them on defence." With seven of the nine Hawks playing See Last-second, page 31