BRIT founders ponder 50 years of elite event for young hoopsters
It was 1968. Merv Houghton was the head coach.
The Bedford Road Redmen smothered opponents with an aggressive pressure-style defence.
Zone-press was their middle name. Basketball was the game.
Bedford’s senior boys basketball squad won its one and only Bedford Road Invitational Tournament (BRIT) championship title that year.
Fifty years have passed, but Houghton — one of six founding members of BRIT and the man responsible for the design of Bedford’s state-of-the art gymnasium way back then — feels his 1968 Bedford Road team could still compete today.
“We’d have to change our style, but I think we’d do all right,” Houghton said Friday following the annual BRIT breakfast, held this year at the Radisson Hotel.
“We’d be different. Back then, there was no three-point shooting and we prided ourselves in a variety of zone presses. Our whole theory was run-and-gun.”
Houghton is 87 years old — the “same number as Sidney Crosby,” he points out — and spends his winters in Mesa, Arizona. He’s back along with four other BRIT founding fathers, together with most of the BRIT special guests of the past 49 years.
“He was a great coach,” recalls longtime BRIT official and volun- teer Kelly Bowers when talking about Houghton.
Houghton helped the Bedford team win its one and only BRIT title, along with two provincial boys basketball titles in 1972 and 1974.
“We came close (to winning another BRIT),” points out Houghton. “One year we lost to Mount Royal, we were ahead by 17 points at halftime and we lost to them. That same year, we played Mount Royal in the northern Saskatchewan championship and we were down 17 points at halftime and we came back and won. And then we won the provincial title.”
Being back for the 50th BRIT anniversary is a special time for Houghton, who is one of five of the six BRIT founding members still alive. (The others are Don Cousins, Walter Mudge, Carl Chiko and Roger Hughes. Dean Dickson passed away in 2016.)
Fifty years. Wow. Where has the time gone?
“It’s unbelievable,” admits Houghton, adding that it’s a thrill to be around for BRIT 50. “Of course, I’m with the old boys and all we talk about all the fun we had and how interesting it was back in those days.
“We thought it (BRIT) would be good but we didn’t realize how big it would be. The thing that was so exciting about it was how much the school got involved, all the staff members and all the students — I mean, everybody got involved. That was exciting.”
Houghton is credited for Bedford’s gym layout.
“It was a Cadillac back then,” notes Bowers.
Back in the 1960s, Houghton had been doing his master’s degree in the basketball hotbed of Indiana. One of his courses was on school gymnasiums.
“The idea was to have as much floor space as you could, so we made it a 100 x 100 (square-foot) floor space,” explains Houghton. “We thought pullout bleachers and lots of room for the kids.”
There is also room for an excess of 1,000 fans who cram the gym to see what continues to be one of Canada’s premiere high school basketball tournaments.
Don Cousins never imagined, in his wildest dreams, that BRIT would grow and become what it is today.
He shrugs and then cracks a smile.
“Not really, I was just hoping to get through the first one without financial difficulty,” he says with a chuckle. “Fortunately, that first year, we had financial backing of our principal. It just carried on from there. As we went through the years, it started with eight teams and then, on the 10th anniversary, we went to 10 teams and we kept going.”
Cousins keeps going, too. Of course, he is absolutely thrilled to be part of BRIT 50, as he should be. In many ways, Cousins is Mr. BRIT.
For a good chunk of those 50 years, Cousins, as Bowers points out, “was the face of BRIT” and chaired the organizing committee for over 20 years.
“Well, I guess it was OK, but there are a lot of others who had a face in it as well,” Cousins says, quickly deflecting the praise.
“It’s very exciting; it also makes me very humble. The tournament is such a good tournament. Just to come here and see kids and students get excited about the game of basketball puts enough energy in me to go for a few more years.”
Cousins has attended and volunteered at all 50 BRIT years.
“There were some excellent teams we’ve had from Ontario but maybe the Gauchos from New York were the best team I’ve encountered during my time as chairman — it was just fantastic to see what high school kids could really do with a basketball,” Cousins reflects.
“It gave an experience to shoot for as far as our boys were concerned. That was kind of one of our main ideas to start with, to improve basketball in our city.
“As far as getting good teams, the New York Gauchos team was exceptional. But as far as getting good teams in the tournament, we haven’t had any trouble. Once we got going, it runs itself.”
BRIT is run by a close-knit, extended BRIT family with many of the same volunteers still coming back again and again, year in and year out.
“We’re very close,” says Cousins. “(The volunteer organizers) are very close. They keep coming back and enjoying the BRIT from year to year. That’s why I’m here, too. Even the alumni keep coming back.”