Thiel meshes with city hoopsters
SWISHING MISSION: North Van native’s startup gives outdoor courts much-needed love
Brodan Thiel had done it a hundred times before.
On a Saturday evening, the North Vancouver native had just wrapped up another lengthy weight room training session with some of the most loyal and devote members of his startup, Dynamite Basketball academy. With his trademark green elbow pad and sneakers in hand, he piled into his Cadillac DTS heading to a game of pickup basketball with some fellow coaches across town.
He didn’t make it past the first two blocks.
“I pulled over at the side of the road and saw a kid shooting and I kept thinking how much this sucked,” said Thiel. “Here is this court, everything in place and there’s no net or mesh on the rims, nothing to catch the ball when it goes in. So the kid is shooting and shooting and chasing after it every time, but eventually it wears him down. The ball is bouncing all over the place when it goes in and ruining the entire workout, so I decided there that I was going to follow through on something I had been thinking about for a long time.”
For the past month, Thiel has spearheaded a communal initiative in East Vancouver district “The Swishing Mission.” The movement, made in an effort to help improve the experience and promote the game of basketball for Vancouver ballers everywhere, has caught the eye of players and coaches within the community.
“The basic idea is that whenever a player is at a court and is in need of a net, they have to take a photo of the hoop and hashtag swishing mission (#swishingmission) onto their Instagram post,” said Thiel, whose account handle is dynamitebasketball.
“Then no matter the time or day, I’ll go and get a net up at that court ASAP and we may even help clean up the court a bit if need be.”
At $18 a pop, the 28-year-old has helped put up 53 nets to date with plenty more on the way. And while the entrepreneur admits the campaign has been far from cheap on the two-year-old startup company’s chequebooks, Thiel says the decision to follow through has always stemmed from a much larger purpose.
As a former co-op housing occupant raised by his mother in North Vancouver, the basketball enthusiast knows first-hand the difficulties of being raised in some of the city’s more rugged areas.
Attendance and behavioural issues were a reoccurring theme for Thiel as a teenager at Carson Graham. He readily admits that stability, income, role models — and, at times, positivity — were all absent during those days.
But even so, the bruising big man managed to scrape his way through high school before bouncing around a few colleges, eventually settling at Quest University in Squamish, where he graduated from in 2013. A cushy teaching position at St. George’s Secondary and then Alexander Academy is what awaited him following his graduation.
But he knew something was missing.
“I was applying to different coaching positions, one in particular at Quest (University) really caught my eye, and I could have kept going down that route and maybe get a head-coaching position. Who knows? But I pulled my application out because I know this — and the thought behind the movement — is bigger than myself, than 12 people on a team or a coaching position,” said Thiel, who played four years with the Kermodes from 2009-13.
“This could impact thousands, tens of thousands of lives hopefully if I get to where I want to go with it. I just think that sometimes you have to ask yourself and say ‘What kind of impact and legacy do you want to have?’ Is it more important to chase individual goals and aspirations or do you want to impact an entire community?”
And that is exactly the gargantuan task Thiel has taken upon himself these days — quitting his full-time teaching positions in an effort to manically weave together an entire community through basketball.
When prompted to describe what a typical day is like, Thiel chuckles, almost realizing the hectic schedule he has taken on when vocalizing it.
Before hitting the books for his online courses through the University of Missouri, where he is completing his master’s in positive psychology, the coach gets up at 5:30 a.m. every morning to pick up kids throughout East Vancouver for “rise-and-shine” workouts.
The training sessions — that feature many players from other academies — are free and open to any youth within the area who simply want to work on their game.
“Then we have night camps every day currently and I follow that by about three hours of (putting up) nets every night,” said Thiel. “But I never question why I’m doing it or what I’m doing. I was in a tough situation where no one really gave me an opportunity, so if there is anyone out there who I can help reach their life goals — how am I going to say no to that?”
Now it appears much of the Vancouver community is trying to help Thiel reach his future goals. Through “The Swishing Mission,” Thiel has received numerous donations from fellow academies throughout the Lower Mainland — including prominent names like DRIVE, Real Basketball League (RBL) and 3D Basketball — which has helped ease the cost of nets.
“I felt it was important to support the cause because I am always on board with supporting basketball in the local community and I would love to see more kids playing at local parks and courts,” said Blake Poritz, commissioner of the RBL.
“I think kids will be more inclined to do so this way.”
Less than two weeks into the campaign, the Italian Cultural Centre, located at Slocan Street and Grandview Highway, donated an entire outdoor court, citing Thiel’s tireless effort in the community.
The facility features the Dynamite logo at centre court, a list of donors’ names and NCAA breakaway rims with a bevy of other features on the way.
The blacktop is where Thiel’s early morning sessions take place.
“I’ve only known Brodan for three months, but already it’s been great having a mentor like that in my life who is willing to take time out of his day to coach us for free,” said Oliver Seto, 13, heading to Sir Winston Churchill in the fall.
“But other than just basketball skills, he’s taught us all how to be better leaders and give back to the community.”
As Thiel continues to trudge forward in his mission throughout East Vancouver, he does so knowing where his path could have taken him had it not been for basketball and a select few who believed in him.
This past weekend, the Quest grad put on his first outdoor basketball event at his new court, providing free food and drinks for spectators. He is hoping the tournament will be a reoccurring theme. But more importantly, he wishes something as simple as “swishing” can turn out to be so much more for East Vancouver.
“Listen, we are always very upfront with our kids,” he said. “We never try to sell them a dream of it’s NCAA, the pros or nothing. No, that’s not what basketball is about — that’s not what sports are about. It’s about building these kids up with transferable life skills in a way that is fun and memorable so that it carries with them throughout their lives.”
“This could impact thousands ... of lives hopefully if I get to where I want to go with it.” — Brodan Thiel