Schatkowsky raises her level

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This article was published 18/11/2022 (1212 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a U Sports debut that’s been five years in the making but Julia Schatkowsky is capitalizing in a big way on her final year of university basketball.

The 23-year-old centre/forward joined the University of Winnipeg Wesmen in the off-season after four excellent years with the Canadian Mennonite University Blazers.

And so far, she appears to be completely unfazed by the tougher competition she’s facing in the Canada West Athletics Association.

The 6-2 Vincent Massey Collegiate grad had dominated at CMU, which plays in the Manitoba Colleges Athletic Association.

In four conference outings with the Wesmen so far, Schatkowsky has started each game while averaging 11.5 rebounds and 9.8 points per game.

On Nov. 4, she pulled down 20 rebounds and scored six points in Winnipeg’s home-opener against the Thompson Rivers (Kamloops, B.C.) Wolfpack, a 85-49 victory. The 20-rebound effort was the second-highest in program history, behind only Debbie Steele’s 29 in 1979.

“We kind of knew with her coming in what the potential was,” said head coach Alyssa Cox, whose squad is off to a 3-1 start to the regular season. “She played at CMU last year and played against us in our home tournament and had developed a lot, so we’d had a chance to see her play a fair bit.

“The question mark was just how quickly would she adjust to the physicality and the pace of U Sports after playing in the college league and she’s adapted super fast to that and done really well.”

Schatkowsky’s emergence as a force in the front-court is timely.

The Wesmen, national silver medallists last spring, lost a huge chunk of their frontline with the graduation of all-star Faith Hezekiah and U Sports player of the year Keylyn Filewich.

“We were a little skeptical about what the success of our team would be this year but because we lost Keylyn and we lost Faith,” said fifth-year guard Robyn Boulanger. “We really needed someone who could fill those positions and Julia did just that.”

Schatkowsky’s skillset, more limited when she graduated from high school, has expanded and flourished over the years.

“My first year when I was at CMU, I was still very much playing inside, but in my second and third year, I got to play outside more and was really working on my shooting and ball-handling more so that I could play outside and also defend outside,” said Schatkowsky.

Schatkowsky could probably have made the move to the U Sports level earlier, but she was content to complete her bachelor of arts at CMU and play with the Blazers. When the opportunity developed to enter a post-grad education program at U of W, playing a fifth season for the Wesmen made sense.

“During those years she worked so hard at her game, she could play any position basically,” said Blazers head coach Joe Di Curzio. “We used her to bring up the ball against pressure, and any position that we needed she could play it.

“She was a natural athlete, but she worked really hard on improving her skills.”

Boulanger, an old friend from their days on the provincial team, was impressed when Schatkowsky put up 27 points against the Wesmen in a pre-season tournament in the fall of 2021.

“She’s improved so much and I was really in awe when I saw her play and we battled against each other in that tournament,” said Boulanger. “When I heard the rumours of her coming to our team, I was so happy.”

Was Schatkowsky expecting such a prominent role so soon?

“Not really no, but over the summer I was in the gym lots and I was also getting a lot of lifts in because I knew it was going to be a big change in competition level,” she said. “But even though I’m new to U Sports, it’s still fifth year and so I’m still kind of like a veteran player.

“There’s lots of knowledge that I have in the game, it’s just from a different perspective. So, I just want to keep that in mind and be a leader on the court.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14