Panthers are prepped for national success
B.C. Christian looks to add to hardware at NPA tournament
March Madness? They’re getting a double dose of it at B.C. Christian Academy, a small private school (330 students) in Port Coquitlam that unarguably punches above its weight class better than any high school basketball program in the province.
In prep hoops’ most frenetic month, the Panthers are not only celebrating the school’s first B.C. championship — BCCA defeated Kelowna Christian 68-63 for the single-A title at Langley Events Centre in mid-March — but also gearing up for another big dance in Mississauga, Ont.
That begins March 30 at the University of Toronto’s satellite Mississauga campus, where B.C. Christian’s elite senior boys team competes in the inaugural NPA National Championship tournament.
It can be safely argued that B.C. Christian’s B team — coached by Gib Hinz — won the B.C. title. The A team — run by athletic director Doug Dowell — competes independently from the provincial high school system and operates in a much different dynamic.
An imposing assemblage of premier homegrown and international prospects pointed toward NCAA Division I scholarships, Dowell’s team members are road warriors. Their schedule is weighted heavily to out-of-province games with tournaments in California (four), Utah, Arizona, Tennessee and the Toronto area meant as showtime to help select players navigate the journey to the hoops dreams beyond high school.
The Panthers’ elite prep team is stacked with emerging tall talent. Diverse national team age group players from Poland, Turkey, the Bahamas, Belarus as well as British Columbia are driven to attend the faith-based school, the biggest reason being basketball.
Whether playing provincial quad-A champion Walnut Grove (Langley) or single-A champion B.C. Christian, any contest against the Panthers’ prep team probably would result in a mismatch. That’s the reality.
“The kids on Doug’s team are faster, stronger, taller — and they play basketball at a different level,” Hinz concedes.
“Those kids come from overseas and they’re looked at and recruited very extensively. I think the scoreboard, if we played them, would be pretty unbalanced.”
That’s not to take anything away from what Hinz was able to accomplish with his senior boys, who finished 29-3 and never lost to another single-A school in B.C. all season.
For Hinz, a 7-foot graduate from the NAIA’s University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire who was taken in the fifth round of the 1980 NBA draft by the San Antonio Spurs, it was his eighth provincial title as a head coach.
Hinz has won at three different schools in two provinces, Saskatchewan being among numerous stops in a playing/coaching that career that has taken him to France and western Australia.
His coaching career began at tiny Grace Academy in Marysville, Wash. (60 students), so Hinz is used to getting the most from academically rigorous, religiously based small schools.
“We have two programs (at B.C. Christian) that are totally different, like night and day, apples and oranges apart,” Hinz says. “I don’t want to compare the two. And I don’t have any ambition to compete for Doug’s job. I love coaching our boys and seeing them succeed.”
But the fact his trophy-snatching, 6-foot-3 guard Harry Oghomienor was named the MVP of the single-A tournament probably means that Hinz won’t be seeing him next season.
The Nigerian-born Oghomienor became the first Grade 8 student to be named the MVP of a B.C. senior varsity basketball championship tournament. By his Grade 12 year, and probably much sooner than that, Oghomienor figures to be playing teenage basketball for BCCA’s other team, the elite one coached by Dowell.
“Harry’s a great kid,” Dowell says. “And he’s a tremendous athlete. He’ll probably play for us next year (in Grade 9). He’s that good. The whole (elite) program is about helping these prep-level kids reach their goals, the possibility of a Division I scholarship after high school. Harry is one of those kids — and there may be more, God willing.”
It’s not as though Dowell doesn’t care about the second stream of basketball that’s making a name for B.C. Christian. After all, one of his sons, Cody, was a star player on the recently-crowned provincial single-A champions.
The other son, Keenan, played elite prep basketball in San Diego before returning to B.C. Christian. The uncommitted 6-foot-5 senior guard is drawing interest from Tennessee, Rice, Niagara, Washington State, Utah State, Denver, Princeton and Lafayette, as well as U Sports programs.
“Cody is very good, a better shooter than Keenan,” Dowell says. “But he doesn’t share the same passion as Keenan. He has a different mentality than his older brother.”
And so does the traditional B.C. high school basketball system, he suggests.
Dowell points out that only one NCAA representative scouted this year’s provincial tournament in Langley.
“I want what’s best for B.C. high school basketball — and I don’t think we do enough to promote our kids,” he says.
Unique among provincial prep basketball programs, the small Christian academy in Port Coquitlam is doing just that — and staying anything but old school.