From West Bay (or very close to it) to Thunder Bay they come, searching for greater basketball development – and in the Lo-Ellen Park Prep Knights, they find it.

While the core of the local Ontario Scholastic Basketball Association teams (LEP has added a junior squad to their roster this year) remain Nickel City based, there is little doubt that some influx of out of town talent only helps to level the playing field with the bulk of the Knights’ counterparts based in southern Ontario and such.

For as much as this is technically the sixth year of existence of the program that was launched in the fall of 2018, the grind to a halt that was the global pandemic and the mere geographic realities of northern Ontario have forced Lo-Ellen Prep head coach Jennifer Bourget to maintain a highly pro-active approach, looking to supplement her roster.

“I knew of Lo-Ellen as the best school of athletes in Sudbury, but other than that, I didn’t know anything about the Prep program,” admitted 17 year old long-time Manitoulin Island resident Annie Balfe, the eldest of three highly athletic youngsters in the family of Manitoulin Secondary School teacher-parents.

Introduced to basketball in grade four and making the jump to Sudbury Jam some four years ago, Balfe had options as she looked to whittle down her sport participation in high-school.

Her mother having played varsity volleyball at Queen’s University, Balfe showed signs of being able to follow in those footsteps. But standing 5’8” ½ and blessed with a motor that allows her to comfortably compete in the cross-country circuit and the natural athleticism that produced a fourth place finish at OFSAA as a junior in the triple jump, she also could likely be sculpted in a few different ways.

Ultimately, Balfe would bite the bullet and attend Lo-Ellen tryouts in the summer of 2022.

“When I first went out to tryouts, I was a little uncomfortable, only because everybody was friends – and it was definitely a jump,” she said. “Then I made the team and started to become friends with the girls and it was good – but I was not confident at all. Every time I got the ball, I would pass it to someone immediately.”

“Thankfully, one of my strengths has always been defense,” Balfe added. “I’m a good athlete. I can run and play defense and was typically pretty good at it.”

Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – the 2022-2023 OSBA season threw far more at Balfe and her teammates than was initially expected. Having qualified for promotion the year before in large part based on the critical 1-2 punch that were Syla and Savannah Swords, the Knights were stripped of that production just as the season began, the girls and family moving down to Long Island to join their father (Shawn), all while rocketing to the top of the NCAA recruitment charts in the process.

The end result locally was an 0-14 campaign – but one that came with a definite silver lining for Balfe and the four other teammates who have now returned to help Lo-Ellen to a 7-4 record in Trillium Division standings at the Christmas break this year.

“From a team standpoint, it was a rocky year – but my experience as a player was good because I improved so much,” said Balfe. And that, in large part, was due to the contributions of the woman who spends an inordinate amount of time in the Lo-Ellen gymnasium, year after year.

“I love playing for coach Bourget,” said Balfe. “She inspires me to try harder all the time. She pushes me really well, which I love.”

In the case of Thunder Bay teammate Keira Chow, coach Bourget has been handed the baton this year from the likes of former Lakehead women’s basketball coach Jon Kreiner and Hammarskjold High School coach John Clouthier.

“The season here is so much longer and the skill here is so much higher,” noted Chow, a 5’9” power forward who can play the 3/4 in the numerically numbered positional charting that Lo-Ellen Park employs.

Similar to Balfe, the 18 year-old grade 13 import also would find basketball offered among the sporting smorgasbord that she enjoyed in her youth, an accomplished downhill skier and multi-sport athlete.

“My parents would throw me into different sports and one summer, they signed me up for a high performance basketball camp,” she said. “The club coach (Thunder Bay Jr Wolves) saw that I was just really enjoying it and was having fun playing basketball. I kind of understood the concepts of the game as well, for as much as I could at a young age.”

If she was to pursue post-secondary basketball as a dream, Chow understood that there was a need to diversify her game. “My main thing has always been as a driver, making moves in the paint and finishing at the rim,” she said. “I’ve never been much of a shooter.”

“Coach Bourget has worked a lot on my form and it’s gotten a lot better; I’ve gotten a lot more confident. My release point was bad – I had a really flat shot. I had no arc before. My release point was really low and I also didn’t straighten my arm, which caused me to be very inconsistent.”

“I’ve been working on getting it higher and along with having a higher release point, my arms has kind of fixed itself.”

For as much as her previous coaches could work on skill development until the cows come home, there was a need to Chow to experience a much greater push in game situations. “It’s all about playing at a higher level, playing with a lot of players who are good,” she said. “I didn’t get a lot of that before.”

“The competitive level, even at our practices, is really good. I honestly didn’t know what a prep team was until last year.”

Slowly, very slowly, the word is getting out, right across the north.

The balance of the 2023-2024 Lo-Ellen Park Prep roster includes recent Queen’s Gaels commit Bree Bourget as well as Kami Dreger, Kaitlyn McMillan, Cadence Pecore, Marlie Hayle, Kyla Viotto, Kiersten Goudreau, Sidney Skrobot and junior Sarah Guignard as well as assistant coach Dawn Russell.

The Lo-Ellen Jr Prep Knights roster is comprised of Sophie Miller, Allessia Vallilee, Michaela Tripp, Kaylee Prevost-Patterson, Lennex Belair, Annick Gilbert, Zayda Paris, Sofie Lafond, Jacqueline Tissot van Patot, Ellie Sauve, Mattia Mullen, Sunny Dunlop, head coach Lisa Carruthers and assistant coach Chris Miller.