Women’s basketball coach grateful for trust of team captains

Iva Peklova says she will be sad when her Lancer career is over, but she doesn’t have time to think about that yet. While the women’s basketball team will play its final game of the regular season Saturday at the St. Denis Centre, Peklova and the rest of the squad plan to enjoy an extended playoff run.

Peklova and co-captain Emily Abbott are both in their fifth and final year of varsity sport. They will be honoured during a ceremony before Saturday’s game against the Western Mustangs; tip-off is at 2 p.m.

A native of the Czech Republic, Peklova recalls that when she was introduced to local media on her arrival in 2007, she hoped out loud for a national championship.

“I think people laughed, but a couple of years later, we won the Ontario title and a couple more years after that we won the national title,” she says.

Head coach Chantal Vallée says that her captains are the building blocks for the program’s success, including its first-ever Canadian Interuniversity Sport championship in 2011.

“What makes them so special is that both of them decided to attend Windsor in the spring of 2007 when the program was not really good,” she says. “But they both believed that if they committed here, they would help build a championship program.”

She says she will be forever grateful for their trust.

“They took a chance on me as a coach, and on our team vision to turn around the program,” Vallée says. “Their leadership and performances were keys to our many wins, and their personalities were part of what made our team so lovable for the community.”

The men’s basketball team will also close out the regular season with a home game against Western; they play at 4 p.m.

The men’s and women’s hockey teams opened their best-of-three quarterfinal series with victories Thursday. The women scored a 3-2 win over Guelph and will play game two on Saturday, February 18, at South Windsor Arena. The puck drops at 4:10 p.m. The men earned a 5-4 overtime win against York in Windsor and will head to Toronto to continue the series Saturday.

The men’s volleyball team will face the Waterloo Warriors in quarter-final action on Saturday, February 18, in the St. Denis fieldhouse. Game time is 7:30 p.m. Read the full story, “Men’s volleyball to host Waterloo in OUA quarter-finals.”