Submitted photos – The St. Bernard’s Crusaders won the Kelseyville tournament with a 67-35 win over the host school on Saturday night.

Sophomore Carli Baum was named tournament MVP on Saturday after helping to lead the St. Bernard’s Crusaders to a tournament championship in Kelseyville with a 67-35 win over the host school in the final.

The tournament championship was particularly gratifying for a St. Bernard’s team that had lost back-to-back tournament finals in each of the past two weekends, at Sonoma Valley and Mt. Shasta.

But this time around they would not be denied, running out to a comfortable and impressive 32-point win.

The players came ready to go and focused.

“The ladies attacked the championship game with great energy and brought home the trophy,” SB head coach Matt Tomlin said. “It was another amazing team effort by all 11 girls that played.”

And it was so on both sides of the ball.

“Our relentless full-court pressure caused Kelseyville problems and led to easy offensive scores in transition,” Tomlin added.

No one had a bigger impact in the tournament victory than Baum, who has picked up this year just where she left off as a freshman a year ago.

Baum scored 13 points in Saturday’s win to cap three big days in tournament play.

“Carli Baum was electric at point guard all weekend,” Tomlin said of the young standout. 

Baum’s teammate Samantha Sundberg also has been very impressive early in the new season and was so once again on Saturday, finishing with a team-high 14 points in the championship game and earning all-tournament honors.

Alyssa Boham, who earlier this week signed a letter of intent to compete in track and field at Oregon Tech, also impressed for St. Bernard’s and added 12 points, while CJ Figas finished with 10 points, Paula Bullock had six points and Lulu Vainuku chipped in five points.

With the win, the Crusaders improved to 7-3 on the season.

Next up, they will travel to Huntington Beach on Christmas Day to begin competing at the 32-team Surf City Holiday Classic on Friday.

Submitted photo – St. Bernard’s Carli Baum, right, was named tournament MVP at Kelseyville on Saturday, while her teammate Samantha Sundberg was also named to all-tournament team.