Michelle Matson, a grade eight student at Stanley Humphries Secondary (SHSS), got the opportunity to take to the court with the top grade eight players in the province.
Over the Christmas break, Matson attended the Basketball B.C. Top 40 Camp at Trinity Western University in Langley from Dec. 28-30.
"It was good to see how I related to all of the other players," she said. "I did pretty good. I was about average. There were some girls there that were really good."
Matson got the opportunity to work with some of the top coaches in Canada including national team coach Alison McNeil and assistant national team coach Mike McNeil.
"It was mostly a skills camp," she said. "We worked on shooting and ball-handling and 3 on 2."
Matson is a 6'2 post playing with the SHSS junior team along with her older sister Kelsey. Coaching the team are their parents Gord and Kim, who both played university basketball at UBC. Michelle looks to be following in her parents' footsteps, as she is one of the top players on the junior team particularly on defence where she is able to use her size and agility to strong effect.
Matson was pleased with her shooting at the camp, but would like to develop her dribbling after seeing the skill level of the other players.
"In the ball-handling area I was pretty far behind," she said. "But now I have some good drills to work on."