This past Saturday, three players from the GVC varsity girls team, a member of the varsity boys team, and the staff of the girls team were in Winnipeg, taking part in the special Graduating Event celebrating AAA, AA, and A athletes.<\/p>\n
“I mean, it didn’t really have a lot to do with me in particular,” coach Bobby Matuszewski says with a laugh. “We just had a lot of athletes attending, so I guess that’s why Basketball Manitoba had our coaching staff there. We just had three, which was tied for the most from one school.\u00a0So I wouldn’t say that I had anything to do with it.”<\/p>\n
Celebrating the athletes<\/p>\n
Having three from his team be a part of it was great, but Matuszewski says they could have had even more. “I mean, to be honest, we could have had six,” he says proudly. “There’s a lot of really good players there, but we had another three that easily could have been there for sure. The three that did get selected were all extremely deserving, and it was good to see them get celebrated, for sure.”<\/p>\n
Leading up to the event, several players talked about playing with players they normally battle, and it was something the coach really enjoyed as well. “Yeah, it was fun. We had one team that we’ve beaten in provincials three years in a row, and we were on the same team. So it was fun to get to see those players score a lot of points and not hurt us. We had another team we played four times this year that we were on the same team we were against. So it’s definitely fun to see that from different players that we normally compete against.”<\/p>\n
“I hope they enjoyed it for sure,” Matuszewski says he hopes the players took away from the event. “I think they’re able to look back at and be proud of their whole high school careers. As I said, they definitely deserve to be selected. So I think that’s kind of what they take.\u00a0It was cool to be able to coach him one more time. Yeah, it’s definitely bittersweet. But, I mean, I’ve told all of them, I mean, everything they’ve put into basketball over the past three years that I’ve coached them, if they put that into anything else in their life, they’re all going to be largely successful.”<\/p>\n
Big picture for GVC<\/p>\n
Having so many representatives on behalf of GVC is something that shouldn’t go underappreciated, according to Matuszewski. “I think it’s really big,” he says with a grin. “I think the other piece that is really big with that is obviously, we have them that are selected. But these girls are very involved in the community as well with Winkler Minor basketball. Some of them have coached before. Some of them are coaching for the first time this year. Some of them aren’t coaching this year. But yeah, for all of them to be involved in the community and giving back to the community, there are girls who talk about these girls, and so for them to be role models for everyone else, I think, is massive for GVC Basketball moving forward.”<\/p>\n
The next wave<\/p>\n
There is going to be a different-looking GVC varsity girls team next year, according to Matuszewski. “We had nine graduating players this year. So at the start of the year, we only had three underclassmen, and we did pick up two JV players after their season ended as well, just to practice with us. I think it’ll be really interesting. It’ll be a bit of a different year because we’ve had a lot of stability, and we’ll have a ton of turnover now. There’ll be a lot of opportunities for girls to have different roles. To grow in substantial ways, and I think if you come out and compete in high school, you can always, you know, give yourself a chance to win basketball games. That’s the goal.”<\/p>\n
Important programs<\/p>\n
Having these high-level high school programs available to athletes is very important, say Matuszewski, and he’s glad to have them around. “It’s super cool for basketball in Manitoba to put on an event like this. Basketball Manitoba has put a lot of work in and basketball looks to continue to grow in Manitoba. Obviously, there are the (Winnipeg) Sea Bears now and all those things. So events like this are super cool. It’s a fun event that I think everyone who takes part in it should definitely be proud of.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This past Saturday, three players from the GVC varsity girls team, a member of the varsity boys team,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":{"0":"post-618661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-winnipeg","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-winnipeg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}