North York boasts the best girls high school hockey team in Ontario after St. Basil The Great from Weston won the gold medal at the provincial championships in Orillia last week.St. Basil won the championship game in the top quad-A level last Friday, beating Stratford's St. Michael CSS 2-1 in overtime.
Kristen Richards scored the winner 9:07 into overtime.
Scoring phenom Thea Imbrogno, who set up the winner, scored St. Basil's first goal of the game at 6:16 of the first period.
St. Basil went into the tournament, like the rest of the Toronto teams, unheralded at the ninth seed, followed by East York Collegiate at No. 10 and Birchmount Park Collegiate (Scarborough) at No. 12.
St. Basil was also unheralded going into the playoff round, after posting a 1-1-1 record in the preliminary round, which was just enough to get them into the eighth and final quarterfinal spot.
But they then picked a perfect time to embark on a three-game winning streak.
First, they proceeded to edge undefeated Waterdown (who were given the top seed after the preliminary round) 4-3 in the quarterfinal.
Then they won their semifinal game 4-1 over Paul Dwyer from Oshawa, vaulting them into the gold medal game.
In the preliminary round, St. Basil defeated All Saints CHS from Kanata 4-2, tied Bishop Tonnos from Ancaster 3-3 and lost 3-2 to Aurora.
North York was also represented in the boys quad-A championships in North Bay by Senator O'Connor, ranked 18th.
They finished with two losses (6-2 to St. Marcellinus Secondary School of Mississauga and 4-1 to Upper Canada College of Toronto) and two ties (4-4 with Central Algoma and 4-4 with Fort Frances).
Two other teams from Toronto were in the competition. Upper Canada College from city centre, 4-0 in the preliminary round, settled for a bronze medal. Sir Oliver Mowat from Scarborough were ousted in the quarterfinals (by Upper Canada College) after posting a 2-1-1 preliminary round record.