Wednesday, March 11, 1998.

It is twenty-five years ago this week, but I remember so many of the details of that day, it could have easily been last week.

Let me set this up a bit.  I was a second-year teacher at McRoberts Secondary School in Richmond, BC.  The school had previously been a junior high school and had its first graduating class in 1997.  I was also the Varsity Boys Basketball Coach.  I was in my 11th year of coaching and my 3rd at the Varsity level.  The 1997-98 season was supposed to be a rebuilding year.  We had one grade 12 in the regular rotation, complimented by an athletic group of grade 11s.  

Even local games had media coverage during the boycott. Here being interviews by John Shorthouse from Sports Page.

And it had been a crazy year for high school basketball.  Allegations of player recruiting filled the pages of the local newspaper sports sections.  It was the year of the boycott, as dozens of teams refused to play teams that were alleged to be fudging the player eligibility rules.  I was 24-years-old and with a blend of confidence, righteousness and naivety, I felt I was a part of a Star Wars like battle trying to blow-up the Death Star.  I remember being told that the “stain of the boycott” would ruin my teaching career – that ended up being a bad take.

And then, all of a sudden, the McRoberts Strikers basketball team was playing well.  Our team’s grade 12 forward Jason Rempel, while often oversized was a strong defender and a solid post player.  And we had an improving group of grade 11s – Graeme Poole, Nick Maitland, Cyrille Bang, David Foreman and Greg Lee that were a formidable group.  We were not ranked in the top 20 once the entire season, but we were definitely getting our wins. In early January, we got a 111-104 win over local rival, the Paul Eberhardt coached McNair Marlins, and a tight 3-point win over Jon Acob’s Burnett Breakers in mid-February got us the #2 Richmond seed for the Lower Mainland Championships.

Of course, qualifying for provincials was still a long shot.  They were nine high schools now in Richmond but only Richmond, McNair and Steveston had ever qualified for the BC version of March Madness.  But things started to fall into place.  Our defense had really picked up.  I was called a “junk dealer” for our style.  One of my coaching mentors, and McRoberts vice-principal of the day, Kent Chappell, had helped put in a series of zone structures he used to win the BCs while coaching the Steveston Packers in 1984, and I had added my mix of box-and-one, triangle-and-two, match-up-zones and other non-typical formations I had picked up by trying to read every book at the local library on basketball coaching.

So, after another tight win over Burnett and a wildcard win over Killarney on Sunday, March 1st, we had done the improbable and qualified for the provincial championships.  In rereading some of my quotes in the newspaper back then, I see I have truly made a life of being a sandbagger.  I told Bob Mackin at the Richmond News following our March 1st win, “We have no superstars on this team just some good players.  We’re not very big, don’t press well and are not real fast.  We get lucky and seem to do everything just a bit better than our opponents to win.”

So, that was the Cinderella story – the McRoberts Strikers, a school only in its second year with a grade 12 graduating class, never having been ranked all season in the top 20 by the basketball pundits, advanced to the BC Championships.

But then there was more.

In the BCs of that time, 12 teams made it to the full-draw and 8 teams played an extra game on the Tuesday to qualify for the main tournament.  So, maybe we could get one more win on this Tuesday draw (For those local basketball fans – you will remember if you didn’t win on Tuesday you played out the tournament at Grizzlies Practice Facility in Richmond.).  We played the Prince George Polars.  It was a squeaker – a one-point game in the 4th quarter.  Four clutch free-throws from Graeme Poole clinched it for us and a 55-43 win.  People don’t pay a lot of attention to who wins the Tuesday games – these are just the teams that will get blown out by the real contenders on the Wednesday.

So, here we are.  We are back to Wednesday, March 11, 1998.

We had a small, but passionate group of fans. Debates still rage whether they misspelled my name by accident, or one of the N’s got cold feet.

We had drawn the Abbotsford Panthers in this round of sixteen game.  Abbotsford was the Fraser Valley Champions and their point-guard Wayne Jones was one of the elite players in the province.  And Abbotsford had a rich basketball history – one of the top programs in the province for decades.  And on this Wednesday morning in March they brought the school with them from Abbotsford to Vancouver and this 10:15 AM match-up at the Agrodome.  Literally, Abbotsford vice-principal Jinder Sarowa organized buses to transport the entire school.  They had hundreds of loud fans with drums and horns.  We had our boys’ families tightly packed together in the seats near our bench.  We also had our school’s new cheer team on the baseline coached by first-year teacher Stephanie Laesecke (25 years later – we now have 23 years of marriage and 4 kids together).

Nobody was giving us a shot.  Steve Ewen’s daily predictions in the Vancouver Province were almost never wrong, and he had picked Abbotsford.  And the game started out as Ewen, the hundreds of Abbotsford students, and most everyone thought it would.  When we called a timeout 3 minutes into the game, the score was 9-0 Abbotsford.  Barking instructions to the boys, I could hear the Abbotsford fans in unison chanting “Start the bus” a reference to the game already being over just as it was really starting.

The moment at the end of the Abbotsford game. You can see the final score still on the clock.

And our next two possessions changed everything.  Poole came down the next two times and hit 3-point shots.  And then we were rolling.  We went on a 22-3 run the rest of the quarter to take an 10-point lead and we never looked back.  Poole finished with 11 points, Greg Lee had 20 and Jason Rempel had 21, and we had won 75-54.  And what do I remember about late in the game?  The now restless Abbotsford fans pegged a couple of us in the back with pennies.  I remember picking one up and putting it in my pocket – I assumed it must be lucky!

Early 2nd quarter action from the semi-final game vs. Richmond.  Tied at 17 at this point.

The next night was another big upset.  We knocked off the Okanagan Champions, Clarence Fulton Maroons, 70-64.   This win set up a semi-final match-up with the Richmond Colts – one of the most dominant high school basketball teams in the history of the tournament.  Our luck ran out that night.  In the prelude to the game, I was quoted in the Vancouver Province, “They’ve got eight or nine players better than our best player. It’s like a pro team playing a college team.  You kind of know  what could happen, but everybody wants to see what happens anyway.  Everybody knows that we should lose by 30 or 40 but this place will be full because of the curiosity of “what if?”  The Agrodome was sold out, and we were close for a half that night.  But we did lose by 30.

Interview with Karin Larsen of CBC.

The Hoosiers-like story was over for McRoberts.  I didn’t realize it then, but that run, and really that win over Abbotsford changed my life.

All the sudden, I was not just some young coach, but people treated me as some sort of coaching wiz-kid.  When you win, you get opportunities.  I had the chance to coach provincial teams, and work with some of the best coaches in the country. Because of our 1998 success, our school got invited to The Reebok Invitational Tournament in Toronto the following year, getting to play on national tv on Sportsnet.   And I got coaching awards – like the next year the Ken Wright Award for Coaching.  And I still think, if we lost to Abbotsford that Wednesday morning, none of this would have happened.   

And accolades can often lead to other accolades, and newspaper and magazines did very flattering stories of my coaching and teaching.  Three years later, I know in part from the media attention, I got hired in Coquitlam as a school vice-principal.  Principalships and a superintendency followed.

And the next year at the BC Championship, Ken Winslade, the quiet behind the scenes leader of the BC High School Boys Basketball Association, came up to me and asked me to consider joining the executive.  I was the first of a new generation to join.  This connection would lead to the last twenty-five years of volunteering and sports administration that allowed me be President of the BC High School Boys Basketball Association for 3 years, negotiate tv contracts and sponsorship deals, and has led to the most impactful volunteer work I still do today supporting the girls and boys high school basketball championships in any ways I can.

And I still think, when we were down 9-0, if Graeme Poole didn’t hit those 2 straight 3-point baskets, my life would likely be different.  It is true that coaches can get too much blame for losses and too much credit for wins.  It is crazy to think how important some 16-year-olds making baskets have been on my life.

It is funny the moments that define us.  I know, we make our own luck.  But there does seem to be a lot of luck in how things work out in life.

For a longtime, I downplayed my involvement in athletics.  I was sensitive to the “dumb jock” wrap many coaches get.   I now fully embrace my love of sports and celebrate the experiences I have had and the many friends I have made.  It is year 36 for me this year coaching basketball.  And I am still chasing that elusive BC Championship or the “blue banner” (a reference to the banner schools get in BC for winning a championship in any sport that is hung in the school gym).  

I owe so much to the young people I have worked with.  My leadership skills I use in all parts of my life, are the ones that I hone through coaching sports.  From soccer, to track, to volleyball and mostly through basketball, I have tested and refined my talents around motivation, building a vision, and leading.

Being interviewed by Province Reporter Steve Ewen at the 1998 Championships.

Rereading the newspaper clippings from a quarter century ago, I am reminded of just how the people I have met through basketball are many of the most important if my life.  Province Sports Reporter Steve Ewen became one of my good friends and we still play slo-pitch softball together.  McNair Coach, Paul Eberhardt now works with me in West Vancouver and runs our sports academy programs.  Burnett Coach, Jon Acob has coached both my sons in high school basketball and we regularly team-up now as co-coaches (and one Jon’s players on that 1998 team Mike Stoneburgh is another great coach today).  Ken Winslade from the Boys Basketball Association is still a mentor, and I now volunteer alongside his son Jason in running the girls and boys championships.  And so many more.

I am sure if we didn’t beat Abbotsford 25-years-ago, my life would still be awesome but I am pretty sure it would be different.  That day was defining.

I found the letter I wrote to the players at the end of the 1998 season.  In part, I said:

Every November begins with optimism as one looks at the season ahead, but  no one, myself included, could have forecast the surprising and exhilarating climax our season would have in March.  In a year in which politics rather than basketball was the hot topic in high school hoops, our team emerged at the end of the year epitomizing all that is good about high school sports:  hard work, class, integrity and sportsmanship.

I am proud to have shared one of the most memorable experiences of my life with you boys this year.  Not any particular win, but the journey we went on is what was special.  The B.C. Championships were a reward for a job well done.  I think you al know that you were better basketball players, and probably better people this year than you were last year.  Next year, we will strive to be better again.  It is not the winning which is important but our journey.

All these years later, I hold to every word in this.

To all those who are playing or coaching in the BC Championships this week – enjoy every minute of it.  And may you too have moments that will change your lives.

At the end of our final game of the 1998 BC High School Provincial Championships.

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