There was an air of lighthearted and saintly competitiveness during St. Matthew’s School’s third annual Holy Hoops intramural basketball tournament.

Team St. Barbara took the trophy for the girls division and St. Aloysius of Gonzaga won the boys division during a championship tournament March 15.

The championship games were a culmination of a weeklong tournament between teams of fifth- through eighth-graders that kicked off with a spaghetti dinner.

Principal Lauren Smith and the Rev. Rod Ermatinger stood on the sidelines cheering for the teams.

“Easy, easy,” Smith called out to the court during the girls’ game.

Ermatinger brought Holy Hoops to St. Matthew’s when he became pastor in 2010. Ermatinger had participated in a similar tournament at the parish he attend as a youth.

“I grew up in St. Ignatius Parish in Chicago and we had a boys basketball tournament for fifth-, sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade boys dating back to 1930,” Ermatinger said. “When I was a little kid you couldn’t wait to play.”

His father was on a winning team in 1940. In the ’70s, Ermatinger came very close.

“I graduated in 1974. I was in the championship game my senior year. We had 16 teams, 10 kids on a team. We lost in overtime, but who remembers things like that,” Ermatinger said with a laugh.

Inside St. Matthew’s gym, the crowd was standing-room-only.

Holy Hoops has brought together the school community, both past and present. St. Matthew’s alumni — now in high school — return as coaches each year.

“They love it,” said St. Aloysius of Gonzaga coach Daniel Olszewski, a sophomore at Flathead High School. “We gave them a few basic plays like the pick and roll and then we told them to just have fun with it.”  

Before the boys competed, Olszewki talked with other coaches. Olszewski was an eighth-grader when Holy Hoops began at St. Matthew’s.

“I won the championship — sorry, I had to point that out,” he said, smiling. He remembered the game was intense, going into overtime then sudden death where the first scoring team wins.

This year, both championship games went into overtime. The girls were the first to play.

St. Barbara coaches Iris Matulevich, a junior at Flathead, and  Johanna Lembke, a sophomore at Flathead, shouted words of encouragement and directives.

St. Barbara went into a two-minute overtime after eighth-grader Savannah Cheff tied things up against team St. Helen, followed by eighth-grader Ellie Hanzel’s tying shot in overtime.

“We wanted to make sure they just stay open and keep moving the ball around to get to everyone,” Matulevich said about her team’s strategy.

During halftime, Ermatinger, seminarian John Crutchfield and former St. Matthew’s Principal Gene Boyle took to the court for a free-throw competition called the Shepherd Shootout. Boyle took first place, Crutchfield second and Ermatinger third.

“There’s a lot of work that goes to putting this on and it’s the parents that do that. They just do a great job,” Ermatinger said.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or by email at [email protected].