Stingers forward just missed getting locked down in Spain
Zac Overwater will be back with the Edmonton Stingers of the Canadian Elite Basketball League after pulling off his version of The Great Escape a month ago.
Overwater, 23, a product of Didsbury and former standout with the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns, was playing professionally with Club Vic in Catalonia, Spain, when the season was abruptly suspended due to the COVID -19 pandemic and the country was locked down.
“They stopped it around March 16 and I flew out and landed in Canada right when they announced they were closing the borders, so I got home just in time,” Overwater said.
“I was in Spain right as they started to go into lockdown and everything started to get really crazy and hit the fan.
“I got out of there the day they went into full-on lockdown, where you weren’t allowed to leave your apartment or anything like that. I was lucky that way. The gym that we played in, they turned into an emergency hospital for COVID. When I got out of there, you could already see the streets were pretty empty, nobody was doing much.”
Spain was hit particularly hard by the virus. According to the Johns Hopkins University and Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center, Spain has the second-highest number of recorded infections in the world at 190,839 as of Friday and the third-most deaths at 20,002. Only the United States with 699,706 has more recorded infections and also the most deaths at 34,180.
“It was a little scary because it happened in a blur,” Overwater said. “We were practising on Wednesday and then the country was going into lockdown on Sunday. It happened so fast and it was kind of nerve-racking, because you’re in a foreign country and if you go into lockdown, then you’re in a situation where you can’t get home and you would be stuck there. I’m glad that I got home when I did.”
Safe in Didsbury with his family, Overwater is looking forward to his second season with the Stingers. The league was to start up its second season in May, but it has since been pushed back into June due to the pandemic.
Overwater averaged 9.5 points and 5.2 rebounds per game with the Stingers last season.
“I’m super-excited to come back,” he said. “It’s tough with everything that’s going on, you don’t know when the season is going to start, but I had a great time last summer. It was a great experience and the city really welcomed us. I never really thought Edmonton would be somewhere where I called home, but it definitely felt like it last year.”
The Stingers finished with an impressive 14-6 record last season, which placed them second in the overall standings. They qualified for Championship Weekend, where they fell to the eventual title winners, the Saskatoon Rattlers, in the semifinal.
Last season on the summer circuit, there was plenty of uncertainty going into the year regarding the calibre of play.
Overwater was going into the CEBL season off an outstanding career with the University of Lethbridge, where he graduated as the third-leading scorer in program history and was a Canada West first-team all-star.
“It was excellent, you could tell right away that it was a professional league and it was kind of shocking to think that it was only in its first year,” Overwater said. “The way it was run, the way it was organized, the promotion they had, it was really a well-run organization”
The CEBL, which added a seventh team in Ottawa for the upcoming season, gives Canadian basketball players an opportunity to play at home in the summer and improve their game.