Hoop Hoop Hurray!
St. Catharines nets international basketball tourny.
A basketball wasn’t available to use as a prop at a Wednesday news conference announcing St. Catharines being awarded an international hoops tournament.
“Does anyone have a basketball?” Walter Sendzik, the city’s mayor, asked before joining the three other keynote speakers for a photo op on a temporary stage on the second floor of Meridian Centre.
That won’t be a problem in June 2018. With eight teams from as far south as Argentina competing in the FIBA boys under-18 Americas championships, bouncing basketballs will abound in the multi-use downtown arena. They will be dribbling up and down a new court that could cost Canada Basketball up to $200,000, passed in bounds by future Olympians and NBA players and, for the host Canadians, swishing through the net, hopefully at a pace-setting rate for the first time in the tournament’s 28-year history.
You’re 12 guys on a bench and that’s it, that’s your fans. And there’s going to 10, 12,000 people in the seats.” Pelham Panthers Basketball Association president Brian Bleich
Canada’s success internationally in a sport developed by a Canadian, albeit at a YMCA in Springsfield, Mass., is definitely on the upswing. Master of ceremonies Rod Mawhood pointed out Canada followed up three third-place finishes in a row with back-to-back silver medals.
“Three bronze medal finishes, then back-to-back silvers – we’re due for gold next year, on this court!”
St. Catharines topped a short list of Brampton, Winnipeg and Vancouver after Federation International de Basketball, the sport’s world governing body, awarded Canada the right to host the biennial tournament for the first time.
“Official FIBA hosting is a strategic priority for us, so we’ve been working on this for about a year and a half,” Canada Basketball president and chief executive officer Michele O’Keefe said. “I just went to FIBA, and I went in ahead of the game, and said ‘Listen, we’re prepared, we’re ready to do this and we need to confirm it right away so we can build our plan.’”
O’Keefe, a Welland native who played basketball at McGill University after graduating from Welland Centennial Secondary School, said Meridian Centre tipped the scales in favour of St. Catharines when the time came to select a venue, as did Brock University.
“I think we’re likely to use the dorms for residences for the athletes and the fact they are so close together.”
Plans to close off St. Paul Street East between the Meridian Centre bridges for a street festival on the final day of the June 11-17 tournament also impressed the selection committee of which O’Keefe was not a part.
“I think it’s such a self-contained little area.”
Niagara’s “basketball history” also was a factor in landing a tournament that has been played in the U.S. on three occasions and in Argentina twice.
“The Niagara Sport Commission and the City of St. Catharines did a great job of building and leveraging the history of basketball down here in Niagara,” she said in an interview. “It just seemed like a perfect fit.”
A top-three finish at the under18s would qualify Canada to compete in the 2019 FIBA Under-19 World Cup, but Canada Basketball’s goals aren’t all that so short term nor limited to the court.
O’Keefe and one-time Olympian Mike Meeks, manager of men’s youth player development, both see hoops at the grassroots level in Niagara benefiting from a legacy of improved coaching, officiating and calibre of play.
Meeks said the opportunity to see some of the best of up-andcoming basketball players in the world can’t help but leave a lasting impression on the next generation.
“An event like this puts it in front of kids,” he said. “There will be kids sitting there watching who may be playing more soccer at one point or more baseball. They are going to come to this event and say ‘Hey, why not basketball.’”
“I started really focusing on basketball at about eighth grade, and the rest is history,” said Meeks, who played for the Canadian men’s team that lost to France in the championship quarter-finals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.
“Events like this, on your home soil, just shows the level which the community is willing to go to for the sport.”
Home-court advantage will be a “huge” factor in Canada’s favour when action gets underway at Meridian Centre. Meeks, speaking from experience, said there can be a “night-and-day difference” between their facilities at home and some of the gyms they practise in when travelling abroad for international tournaments.
Culture shock can also throw players off their games, giving visiting teams more to deal with than the X’s and O’s of executing plays on the court.
“We have to know what the weather is going to be like, the food — sometimes they don’t want to eat the food that’s provided — and not having the comfort of their peers and family and friends to lean on when they meet with some adversity,” Meeks said.
Pelham Panthers Basketball Association president Brian Bleich echoed Meeks’ comments about the importance of home-court advantage at international tournaments. Bleich found playing for Canada at the world junior championships in 1987 in Rome difficult especially after the team prepared for worlds by playing in Bangkok, Thailand.
“We’re playing in hot, humid conditions at a different elevation, and not used to it, and you’ve got to train for that,” he said.
“You’re 12 guys on a bench and that’s it, that’s your fans. And there’s going to 10, 12,000 people in the seats.”
Unlike globetrotting players nowadays, Bleich’s heyday in international hoops was long before Skype.
“I was 17 at the time,” he recalled. “That was back in the ‘80s, there was nothing, there was no phone. I didn’t have contact with my family for almost three months.”
St. Catharines city council showed its support for the bid in a unanimous vote last December to waive $64,000 in rental fees and related costs for use of the city-owned downtown arena.
Sendzik thanked previous councillors who had the foresight to build “this kind of facility in our community so we can host the Scotties, we can host the word under-18 women’s championships.”
“If we didn’t have this facility, we wouldn’t have this event here today,” he said.
Sendzik praised the Niagara Sport Commission
and the company managing day-to-day operations at Meridian Centre for putting on a “great show” when Canada Basketball toured the site.
“These are the individuals that are really doing the heavy lifting to ensure that when Basketball Canada comes in here, they just don’t see the Meridian Centre, they see all that we have to offer, all the way down St. Paul Street,” he said. “They see the volunteers and the support that we have.”
The mayor also acknowledged the many club teams in the region in his remarks.