Provincial basketball championship

Although my girls' basketball team was eliminated in the regional semi-finals a few weeks ago, my school's grade 11-12 team won their regional final and headed to the provincial final this past weekend. I went to help out as a second assistant coach and I saw what an impressive team my friend Pascal has built over the past four years. The girls won three of four games and took the provincial bronze medal. Their only loss came against the powerhouse Ecole Secondaire St-Laurent team, the easy gold medal winners (55 games per year, 200 practices!). I was proud to be part of our little Reine Marie basketball program.

My own team won our last regular season game and, since we finished in fourth place, we will have to win this Friday if we want to make it to the semi-finals.

This weekend, my club AISA will be holding our first race school of the season at St-Eustache. Although it doesn't seem we will have great weather, we will have an excellent instructor lineup, including Claude Bourbonnais and Kuno Wittmer. Pretty impressive. I hope to get in a few laps with the M3 and, if the car is ready in time, the race Civic as well.

Cool cars spotted:
Maserati GT
Aston Martin Vantage
Porsche 997 turbo
Audi RS4
Audi A4 Avant
Audi S6
Audi R8
BMW M5
BMW M3 E92
BMW M535i (RHD)
Dodge Viper
Lamborghini Gallardo
AMG E63

It's hard to be sure spring is really here...

It seems to go down to 0 degrees every night. It snowed a bit today. I'm glad I kept the winter wheels on the BMW. The Civic is being tuned by my friend Marc at his place (Marc is the guy who built the Lotus Seven replica which I test drove last year at St-Eustache). When I saw the shopping list of parts that were needed to refresh the car, I was glad that my race car is a Civic and not a BMW or Porsche. As soon as I get the car back, I will be able to park near where I live for the first time ever, as I have rented an indoor parking spot in the neighbourhood. I can't wait!

My first chance to drive the Civic will be the St-Eustache AISA race school in two weeks. I hope the weather is warmer than it has been in the last few days! A week after that, I might instruct at the BMW Club of Quebec open house at Sanair. If I do, I will try to find a friend to help me get both cars there so I can try them both out.

I am watching the NCAA final on TV as I write this. It's 13-8 for UConn after 8 minutes. I have not been able to find a non-championship game for the girls yet, but I hope the activities technician at the school manages to figure something out. If we don't schedule a game soon, I am afraid it will be very difficult to keep the girls motivated. Still, 10 of 12 uninjured players showed up last Friday (and I'm pretty sure one of the other two was in detention!). My men's team will play in the wild card playoff game this Friday evening. If we lose, our season is over. If we win, we will be in the best-of-three semi-finals. Our team has been plagued by injuries and we never really got into a groove, unlike last year. Still, we have some strong players. It would be sad to see the season end so soon.

I went running again last Wednesday. I managed 10 km, but was unable to maintain the 4:30 pace as I had last Sunday. The following days, I had quite a lot of pain in the lower part of my hamstring. I was not sure if it was an injury, or just soreness. I ran half a block on Saturday to see if I could even run at all. I had received an invitation to run with Franck and the gang from the Running Room Sunday morning at 8:30. After the short test, I figured I would be OK to run. By the end of Saturday evening, though, I had drank half a bottle of wine and eaten a lot, including several cheeses and a very dense dessert. I went to bed without setting an alarm, not planning to run in the morning. However, at 7:22 am, I was awakened by my smoke detector, which had gone on the fritz. I knew I would not be able to fall back asleep, so I got ready to go running. I didn't have much breakfast food, so I ate a banana and a Power Gel. Franck was going to run 30 km (ouch!) and my plan was to join him for 10 km. I met the group and we headed down towards the Lachine Canal at a leisurely pace (4:50-5:00 per km). It was cool and sunny, a beautiful day. When I first looked at my distance run, I was already over 5 km. Since it was out and back, that meant i would be exceeding 10 km, but I did not mind. I felt surprisingly good, despite the food, wine and hamstring. It must have been the weather. I turned back after 7.5 km and, after struggling to climb Peel street to its top, ran a total of 15 km. Although I was a little sore today, I am pretty happy with how my mini-comeback to running has gone.

Cool cars spotted:
Aston Martin Vainquish (!)
Aston Martin Vantage
C6 Corvette Z06
AMG C63
AMG E63
AMG G55
Porsche 959 (! same one as last year)
Porsche 997 Turbo
Porsche 993 Targa
BMW M3 E92
BMW M3 E90
BMW M6
Bentley Continental
Maserati Quattroporte
Jaguar XF-R
Lexus IS-F
Audi RS4
Audi S6 Avant
Audi R8 Spyder
Ferrari 360 (pulled over by cops)

Spring Tune-Up!

The weather has been quite sunny lately and, although it has not been warm, spring is definitely on its way. It's time for spring tune ups!

For myself, it means it's time to start running again. I went out for a 10 km run on Saturday for the first time since December. I wanted to take it easy, but I also wanted to complete the distance in under 45 minutes. It turns out that these two goals were incompatible. I was not feeling great in the last 3 km, so I had to choose between "easy run" and "under 45 minutes". I chose to push it and I finished in 44:58. I'm out of shape, but not that out of shape!

I started up the race Civic for the first time of the year. I brought it over to Marc's place so he could swap in the JDM Integra Type R transmission and do a general tune-up. Pascal was kind enough to rebuild the tranny with a new sleeve set and a new (used) 3rd gear. I can't wait to try it out on the newly repaved St-Eustache circuit. Also, I can't wait to use my new indoor parking spot.

As for the BMW, I just performed an oil change on my own for the first time ever. I followed the instructions I found on the Madrussian web site and, although it took me longer than the time specified on the web site. I had trouble jacking the car up high enough to get under it. I ended up jacking it as high as my jack would allow, then placing the ramps under the wheels, then driving the rest of the way up the ramps. By buying the oil and filter from Perry Auto, I saved over 100$ on the cost of an oil change at the BMW dealer.

Despite the girls' basketball season being officially over, the team has elected to continue practices and I have undertaken to find us friendly games. We'll see how long this post-season enthusiasm lasts!

This weekend, I will participate in a BMW club instructor clinic with the goal of instructing at some of the club's events. It should be interesting to see how a different club operates.

Cool cars spotted:
Audi RS4
Audi S8
Lamborghini Gallardo Spider
Maserati Gran Turismo
Dodge Viper
AMG C63
AMG E63
BMW E92 M3
BMW M5
Nissan Skyline R34 GTR (!)
Bricklin (!)

We lost... bad.

The Diamonds' season is over. We lost the regional semi-final badly. I will not make any excuses, the game just did not go well...

The tournament did not go that well for us...

This past weekend, my bantam girls' basketball headed to the Jeanne-Mance Dragons' tournament. I knew our first game would be tough, as we were playing a team from Repentigny with a strong record. Not only did we lose by 17 points, but one of my players sprained her ankle in the warm up before the game. Not a great start.

Our second game, against a team we had beaten twice before this year, went well. We won by 18. For our final game, we were lucky enough to meet up with the team against which we will be playing tomorrow in the regional semi-final. This allowed me to try out various defensive options. Although we learned a couple of things, we lost 51-38. This was not the confidence-booster I was hoping for. We now have a record of one win and two losses against this school. I really hope to find a way to get the girls to play with confidence tomorrow in the semi-final!

Regular season is over

My team's regular season ended last week on a high note and now, every other team in our league is done as well. We finished 2nd out of 6 teams. Before our last win, I was afraid we might end up third. It turns out the 3rd placed team, College Anjou, lost its last game, ending up with a 7 and 5 record. It looks like we will be playing Anjou in the semi-final in the next few days.

I have been trying to decide what to do with the race car this year. I have pretty much decided to leave it as is and just concentrate on attending as many events as possible. If any of my buddies want to team up with me, we can see about trying to find a little more horsepower.

The M3 is about to hit 110 000 kilometers. I am happy to say that the car remains problem-free. I cannot wait to drive this car on clean roads with some decent performance tires...

Cool cars spotted:

Audi RS4

Audi RS6 Avant

Audi S6 V10

Audi S8

AMG G55

AMG C63

Porsche 997 Carrera 4

Porsche Panamera Turbo

Bentley Continental

BMW E92 M3

Jaguar XKR

Volkswagen Corrado

Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 1

Subaru Sti Sedan

Lexus ISF

Saab Turbo X

The Big Win

Today was the last regular season game for my girls' basketball team, the Diamonds . We were playing against the undefeated Regina Assumpta team, who had already beaten us twice in two meetings. On the first occasion, we lost by 10 points. On the second occasion, we were down 14-0 and I got a technical foul, but we still managed to keep it close and lose by only 5 points.

As far as the season was going, there was no way that we were going to catch up to Regina, who had a record of 10-0 with two games remaining. Our record was 8-3 with one game remaining. This would have us end up in second place behind Regina in our pool, and playing against Collège Anjou in the semi-final (the team that dealt us our third defeat). The outcome of this morning's game would make no difference as to where we or Regina ended up in the season standings. Still, I thought it was an important game, because if we make it to the league finals, it will likely be against Regina.

I was again fortunate enough to have Darlington drop by to give me a hand with the coaching. The girls showed up early and no key players were missing. The mood was light, and before the game, I tried to emphasize that if we could get off to a strong start defensively, we could win the game. I also told them that we did not need to win this game in an attempt to reduce the pressure.

The first minutes of the game were great for us. We were making very few mistakes on defense and this generated a few chances on offense. We were up 8-0 after a few minutes. I think that this situation made the girls nervous, as they were unexpectedly leading the first place team. They began to make mistakes, and the other team capitalized on them. Regina's players did not miss the easy shots we gave them. Their fans were cheering them loudly and we called a time out to get things back under control. This didn't really help, as the girls had lost their confidence. In a ridiculously short time, Regina built a huge lead on us. By halftime, we were down 28-10. This means that Regina went on a 28-2 run in the first half.

We tried not to be too hard on the girls at half time and decided to use our full-court trap in the second half. This aggressive defense had worked wonders in our first game at the tournament a couple of weeks ago, but had little effect against Langevin in our second game there. At this point, we really had nothing to lose, and I just hoped that we could claw our way back to a respectable score.

The pressure defense in fact worked wonders right from the get-go. Regina's players made one mistake after the other, either losing the ball to our defenders or throwing it out of bounds. We missed many easy shots, but it's better to make a few mistakes on offense than on defense. Regina's offense virtually shut down, and our top scorer took over our own offense. She even scored two three-pointers in two attempts (not bad for a girl about 5 feet tall!). Her second three-pointer, our team's third in a couple of minutes, put us into the lead. With 40 seconds to go in the game, we were still up by two points when the ref made a very questionable double-dribble call on our point guard after a Regina defender slapped the ball out of her hands. The end of the game was a real nail-biter... we were in the bonus and our top scorer got fouled with 23 seconds left, while we still had the two-point lead. She then missed both foul shots. The second miss was an airball and Regina had the ball on the side. Our girls managed to regain possession, and our top scorer was again fouled with 13 seconds remaining. Again, she missed both foul shots! Regina made it to the basket, but missed their last shot and we held on for an improbable two-point victory. The girls were jumping up and down in excitement. I couldn't believe they pulled it off, and I was beaming with pride. The Regina team looked dejected. I know it's petty of me, but I have to admit I was happy my girls managed to put an end to Regina's perfect season. The way the game unfolded was really like a Hollywood movie. In the second half, the Diamonds outscored the other team 29-9.

It was a fantastic end to our regular season, and no matter what happens from now on, I am proud of the girls, as they showed they could really rise to the occasion and play like stars. In the next few weeks, we will have another tournament (Jeanne-Mance) and our playoffs. If only I can find a way to motivate them to play like they did for most of the game today, they can have a great post-season. Regardless of the outcome, I hope that today's stunning victory will be etched in the memory of these 12 girls for a long time to come.