Foxcroft blows whistle for Mark Walton
Sacred Heart grad ‘only choice to coach Canadian national women’s hoops team’
While Bo knows football — Ron knows basketball.
“If we are to raise the bar and reach the podium in the 2016 Summer Olympics, Mark Walton is the only choice to coach the Canadian national women’s basketball team,” says respected referee and basketball guru Ron Foxcroft.
The FOX 40 founder is emphatic and effusive in his endorsement of Walton, in response to Canada Basketball’s call for a new national senior women’s coach.
“I have refereed and studied some of the best coaches in the world, including Jack Donohue (Canada’s senior men’s national coach), Dean Smith (36-year tenure, University of North Carolina and FIBA Hall of Fame), coach K (Mike Krzyzewski, 33 years at Duke), Morgan Wootten (DeMatha Catholic High School and 2000 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee), Don McCrae (Canada’s senior women’s national coach),” says Foxcroft.
And having followed Mark Walton’s basketball career since I refereed him as a 12-year-old at Sacred Heart, a high-school player (OFSAA Champion) at Cathedral, and star player at Guelph (OUAA AllStar, all-Canadian and U of Guelph Hall of Fame inductee), I put Mark Walton in the same category as those icons,” said the 1976 Olympic basketball referee. “Mark is a winner, a strategist, and a motivator with an iconic basketball coaching IQ.
“Numerous coaches on this continent and in Europe told me they hated to play a Walton-coached team, because they come ready to play, ready to win with amazing fundamentals and tenacity.”
Foxcroft recalled the extraordinary coaching job Walton did with the National Elite Development Academy.
“Mark took the women’s NEDA team to Europe to play teams much older and won all the games, against all the odds. And in so doing shocked the older more experienced teams. An achievement which has virtually gone unnoticed.”
It’s hard to argue against Foxcroft’s defence of Walton as the heir apparent for Canada’s national women’s senior team. Walton’s resume has muscle.
Many believe that the future of Canada’s women’s national team is rooted in the NEDA graduates — with whom Walton is very familiar. Combine youth and veteran experience under Walton’s tutelage and Canada will have a winner on the world stage.
One only had to be in London during the summer Olympics to see the symmetry between 30-year-old veteran national team point guard Shona Thorburn (Westdale grad) and 19-year-old Natalie Achonwa (St. Mary and NEDA alum) on the Olympic hard court. It was a thing of beauty — a beautiful blend of veteran savvy and talented youth.
Canada Basketball got it right hiring “Hair Canada” — Steve Nash — as GM of the senior men’s national team, and the re-hiring of threetime Olympian and former Raptor bench boss Jay Triano as the head coach of the team.
The dynamic duo (player and coach) were a formidable force at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where Canada fell to France by five points in the quarter finals (68-63).
Team Triano-Nash has some unfinished business. They have waited 16 years. They aim to “take care of business” in Rio. In 2016.
And the women, too, have unfin- ished business. They were ever so close to a final-four performance at the London Olympics.
Canada’s women’s team is poised for a podium performance.
Mark Walton is qualified to take the team to that performance.
Canada’s national soccer team captured the hearts of Canadians at London.
Ron Foxcroft believes that Mark Walton is capable of doing the same thing for women’s basketball, as John Herdman did for women’s soccer.
Let’s hope the little 12-year-old kid who grew up learning the game of basketball at Sacred Heart will be given an opportunity “to raise the bar” and lead Canada’s national women’s senior team to a 2016 podium performance in Rio.