The Steinbach Regional Secondary School varsity boys basketball team is more that holding its own in the South Central Athletic Conference.

This group of Sabres have a 4-3 record with one week left of league play in the SCAC.

And they handed the first place Dakota Lancers their only loss in nine league games.

“It’s been a pretty exciting season,” said SRSS coach Jeff Dykerman. “I’ve been with them since they started junior varsity so it’s kind of our third year running together which makes a difference I find as a coach to have those expectations already set in place. All those small things we’ve been working on for three years are finally starting to come together.”

The Sabres lost two of their first three games and then reeled off three straight wins 65-50 over College Jeanne-Sauve; 88-82 over Dakota and 100-82 over Northlands Parkway.

The winning streak came to an end last Monday when the SRSS lost 84-83 in overtime at home to Glenlawn.

“We’ve had some ups and downs but we seem to be stepping up when it comes up to the big teams like Dakota and Glenlawn,” said Dykerman. “It’s been a lot of fun to see them actually believe that they can do it. They’ve always wanted to do it, and thought they could do it, but to actually believe now is an exciting thing for a coach.”

The Sabres found out two weeks ago they made it into the Manitoba High Schools Athletic Association’s Top 10 AAAA varsity boys basketball weekly rankings.

Coach Dykerman’s team was number 10.

“We had taken down Dakota earlier and that was a huge win for us. It’s the first time we cracked the Top 10 at Steinbach Regional since I can remember - since I talked to some people that have been around here for a long time - since they can remember.”

“Our goal against Glenlawn was really to prove that we actually do belong in the Top 10. We played hard, we tied up that game in the last 30 seconds, went to overtime and we were able to pull ahead by one point with 2.4 seconds left. They just happened to hit that jumper. Despite that loss, we still did what we wanted to do. We proved we belonged in the Top 10 and went toe-to-toe with a seventh ranked team.”

The Sabres are no longer number 10.

This past week they improved on that number by one spot.

“Nine is fantastic,” Dykerman said. “We were hoping to stay 10, now we’re nine and if we could climb a little bit more it would be amazing.”

“I think there’s been a shift recently in the community where in the past you would get volleyball players or soccer players – guys that play other sports filling their time with basketball in the winter. We’re starting to see now, guys who their passion is basketball. All they really play is basketball. They’ve grown up playing basketball especially now with the Southeast Storm Basketball Club in the community and they’re coming through just playing basketball. That’s what they want to do. It makes a difference when you have kids where that’s their passion.”

The Sabres have a busy week when they return to school from the long weekend.

Steinbach Regional will host the J.H. Bruns Broncos on Tuesday and then play road games in Winnipeg against College Jeanne-Sauve on Wednesday and have rematch with the Broncos on Thursday to end the regular season schedule.

So how has this Sabres basketball team been able to crack the MHSAA’s Top 10 weekly rankings and be competitive in the SCAC this season?

“To be honest it’s the communication with each other especially with those top eight guys that see a lot of minutes,” answered coach Dykerman. “There’s a sort of understanding of what each guy on the court brings and what they are going to do and they understand it. They understand each other quite well so they talk to each other and they cover each other on defense. Our defense, I would say, is probably the best defense I’ve coached in a long time. They know how to help each other out, fill in the spaces when needed and recover very well.”