Finora was a ‘presence’ for his basketball players
Coach promoted grassroots hoops throughout decades-long coaching career
Brian Finora took plenty of timeouts coaching basketball in a decades-long career teaching at Catholic schools throughout Niagara, though mostly after the opening tipoff and before the final buzzer.
Off the court, Finora rarely took a break from growing the game, especially at the grassroots level in the community. When he was teaching at the former St. Joseph’s elementary school in Welland in the 1980s, Finora encouraged students to play minor ball.
“He really promoted the game,” recalled Mike Rao, a one-time coaching competitor of Finora and now the head coach of the women’s team at Brock University. “He got all his basketball players — predominantly guys, but some girls, as well — into the system to elongate their season so they would be better for St. Joseph.
Finora, who died of a heart attack Oct. 20 at the age of 69, had “some good teams” at St. Joseph’s as a result.
“He would have them playing all year long, and he would really promote Welland minor basketball in his school. They would come out and compete for the city championship when it was pretty big,” Rao said. “He was really involved with elementary school basketball really getting off the ground.
“He was tremendous. He helped us get players and he kept it going for a number of years.”
Finora took a passion for promoting the game with him when he began teaching at the high school level. In addition to Denis Morris and Holy Cross in his native St. Catharines, where he coached his son Victor, Finora also taught geography at Lakeshore in Port Colborne and Saint Paul in Niagara Falls.
Through no fault of their own, Finora’s high school teams didn’t fare all that well when they played Notre Dame, a school with a larger enrolment and deeper basketball tradition.
“I was at Notre Dame, we were kind of a ‘level up,’ ” recalled Rao, who coached Notre Dame’s senior boys team for 19 years before retiring from teaching. “There may have been a few times where he may have won, but I do remember he always took a hungry group of kids. They always competed.”
Finora was a “fundamentalist” when it came to X’s and O’s.
“He taught the basics, much like all of us did. His kids were well-schooled,” Rao said. “Now, I don’t think he had the cream of the crop, but it didn’t matter.”
Rao, a graduate of Eastdale Secondary School in Welland, appreciated Finora’s “east-end” approach to coaching basketball. “They were tough kids. He taught them to play a lot of street ball, like hard-nosed, like we all did on the east end,” Rao said. “I was appreciative of that and I coached some of his kids from St. Joseph’s when I coached the rep teams. I remember them being very good fundamentally — good dribblers, good passers, pretty good shooters.
“I used to watch his teams and his teams were good. He was valuable. He was always there. He was a presence for the kids, he gave them a place to play.”
Victor Finora followed in his father’s footsteps. The graduate of William Penn, Class of 2006, is in his fourth season as men’s basketball head coach at Division 2 Mars Hill University in Mars Hill, N.C., after five years coaching alongside wife Jenny as a women’s team assistant at Coker University in Hartsville, N.C. He also served as a men’s team graduate assistant at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Finora is also survived by Monique, his wife of 44 years, daughter Nathalie and four grandchildren. A small private gathering has been arranged due to COVID-19 restrictions. Instead of flowers, the family is encouraging donations to the Lakeshore Catholic High School Geography program.
“He was tremendous. He helped us get players and he kept it going for a number of years.” MIKE RAO COACHING COMPETITOR