Tough competition over the weekend has relegated the W.R. Myers Rebels to the “B” division in re-seeding for the Southern Alberta High School Boys Basketball League.
The heartbreaker came on Friday in a roadtrip to Raymond to battle the scrappy Comets. The Rebels raced out to a 15-point half-time lead but could not hold on, and lost 89-71.
“At the start, the boys really played the way I had been dying waiting for them to play. I actually talked with one of the dads I knew from Raymond before and I was telling him it all depends which team shows up,” said Aaron Edlund, head coach of the W.R. Myers Rebels varsity boys basketball team. “Unfortunately, the good team didn’t show up for the second half. Raymond came out with a lot of intensity and we didn’t match it. It got physical and there were not as many fouls called as I would liked and we kind of rolled over.”
David Johnson played a solid 32 minutes and scored 21 points, including 3-for-3 from beyond the arc to go with eight rebounds and four assists.  
Knowing they were relegated to the “B” division, it put the Rebels in a tough mental state for its home game against Cardston Cougars on Saturday, the toughest team in the league.
“Cardston is pretty strong. They haven’t lost yet and no one has even given them a 20-point game yet this season. For us, we lost Connor Layton on Friday (concussion) with an elbow, and he was the fill-in starter for some of my other injured kids,” said Edlund. “It took three guys out of my leading players out of the rotation and to not be 100 per cent against the top team in the league is a recipe for disaster.”
The result for the Rebels was an 83-53 home loss to the Cougars on Saturday.
“Ben Anderson played really well against Cardston, taking the ball to the hoop really well. All year long I’ve been dying to get some leadership out of Ben and David, so if we can build off the weekend and do that down the stretch, we should be in a pretty good position,” said Edlund.
Anderson poured in 22 points to go with six rebounds and six steals. Trevor Marsden chipped in 13 points and 10 rebounds.
Last Tuesday’s night game against Winston Churchill Bulldogs at home was a 62-53 win. Scoring was spread around with Trey Workman, Tom Johnson, David Johnson and Brody Jensen all hitting double digits.
While now in the “B” division, it will still allow the Rebels to be a sneaky play when the league championship tournament rolls around.
“All season long, I’ve kind of predicted looking at the draw, one team from the ‘B’ pool will be able to make some noise. Now, for the next two weeks, the top five teams in a 12-day schedule will have to lay and beat the crap out of each other,” said Edlund. “Being in the ‘B’ division, we can get healthy and hopefully get confident and then go into either Catholic Central or LCI and those are two teams that if we play really well, we can beat. We won’t have to match up with Cardston if we can keep our position.”
A cleaner bill of health is needed for a Rebels squad that has already lost Kurtis Krizsan to a broken leg and Edlund is waiting word on the status of post player McKay Lepard’s lower body injury. Layton is still recovering from his concussion and solid Grade 10 post Brody Jensen has been playing at 50 per cent with a pinched nerve  in his hip.
“We are pretty beat up, but hopefully we will be better. The teams we will have to beat if we truly want to go to provincials are all in the “A” pool,” said Edlund. “If we can keep some secrets and get some confidence we can do some damage. With our record at this point, I would expect teams will overlook us which is a great position to be in.”
With the re-seeding, the Rebels travel to Winston Churchill on Friday and then to Chinook on Saturday. The Rebels then host Kainai Warriors on Tuesday with junior varsity at 6 p.m. and varsity at 7:45 p.m.
The junior varsity programs are locked into their seedings regardless for the next two weeks with seedings already determined with the JV Rebels boys finishing third overall.
“The JVs did really well. They didn’t beat Raymond on Friday because I took Tom (Johnson) and Brody (Jensen) strictly with me where they had been floating between the two programs. They were locked into third whether they had won both of their games or lost both of their games and our Friday game we still had a chance to finish in the top five. But the JV Rebels still put up a good fight.”