There was something cooking on the basketball courts at Burnaby Mountain Secondary.
The girls AAA basketball team already had a star in the making in Jacey Bailey, but before the season began not much of a team was coming together.
The school vice-principal and coach James Morton was looking at putting a senior girls team together for Bailey, but a lack of players before the season threatened to nix her final season.
So he hung up a signup sheet looking for players.
What Morton ended up getting was a full team that included four international students, including one who had never played the game before.
The team, fit for the United Nations included Catherine Zheng from China, Karen Ito from Japan, Karen Moehler from Germany and Eugenia Garaffo from Italy.
The team proved sport has no language barrier. Not only did the girls excel in their game, the team excelled on the court.
At one point, the team won six in a row in league play and were in the middle of the pack when the Burnaby-New Westminster division playoffs began in March.
The team was giving up just about 30 points a game on average.
“They’ve done a great job; they realize now the work they’ve put in is why they’re successful,” Morton told the NOW. “They’re teaching each other.”
