WATCH: ‘We can beat anybody’: OC Coyotes women’s basketball team aims high

• The win is the first in the OC Coyotes women's basketball program history
• Team now heads to national championship at VIU in Nanaimo later this month

After a tough schedule of three games in three nights, the Okanagan College Coyotes women’s basketball team have won their first Pacific Western Athletic Association (PACWEST) title.

It came after gritty, hard-fought wins against Langar College, Capilano University and upsetting the number one ranked Vancouver Island University (VIU) Mariners 79-74.

They are now the fifth ranked team in the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) heading into the next tournament.

Head Coach Andrew Gini told Kelowna10 the title was a bit of a surprise for the relatively new program but credited his players with putting in the effort to get it done.

“We earned it with a lot of our players putting in the work over the last few years,” he said. “Having an opportunity to bounce back from our playoff loss a couple of years ago and now having the chance to go to nationals, I think that work they put in was huge and was a huge part of why we’re successful.”

There’s no word yet on who the Coyotes will play to start the national championship. But Gini said regardless of who they play, it’s about sticking to how they played all season, with competitiveness and grit.

“We have confidence that we can beat anybody. Other teams might see us as the underdog just because we haven’t been there before,” he said. “We’ve taken that approach into playoffs especially against the two teams we lost to during the season.”

Coyotes first year player Julia Kreitz said the team came up big in the game with the most significance.

“It was definitely very exciting for us. We worked really hard all season and we were pretty close with VIU all year and finally at the end when it mattered most,” she said.

Her teammate, Victoria Henne, whose been with the team since the beginning, said the group has really come together, and used their family mentality to finally reach a milestone they’ve waited for.

“I didn’t think we’d get to this point. In my first year, I never dreamed this being a possibility,” she said. “In that [VIU] game it was a close game, there wasn’t one point in that game where I thought we don’t have this. We wanted it.”

Tournament all-star Natasha Alfonso said the turning point for the team was coming back from 13 points down after the first half against Capilano to win 82-73.

“We go with the mindset that nothing is earned yet,” she said. “We need to go to this tournament the same way we did at provincials and play every game as our last game. We have to put everything on the floor.”

The Coyotes are a community funded team and are currently raising money to go to nationals. Donations are being solicited through GoFundMe.

The CCAA national tournament takes place March 24 to 27 at VIU in Nanaimo.