Basketball

BASKETBALL began in BC, one story goes, in 1897 when Carey Pope returned from Portland, OR, to VICTORIA to spread the word of a new sport developing in the US. Pope and other enthusiasts turned a building on Belleville St into BC's first basketball court by lining the windows with chicken wire, marking the floor and setting up iron hoops. However, historic photographs of a Victoria "BC Basketball Champions" team dating back to 1893–94 suggest even earlier origins for the game in BC.

Early Days

Regardless, it was in 1897 that the first known league was formed in Victoria, featuring games every Saturday night at the old Drill Hall on Menzies St. The first recorded women's game was played in 1903 when the Seattle High School girls met a team of girls from Vancouver College. One of Canada's finest basketball players in the early days of the sport was Roy Phipps of VANCOUVER, who led his local YMCA clubs and McGill Univ College (the precursor to UBC) to city championships and was a longtime player and coach for the Native Sons of BC. BC's first national men's title was captured in 1929 by the NEW WESTMINSTER Adanacs. Adanacs star Wally Mayers was an original inductee to the BC SPORTS HALL OF FAME. The national crown was won by the Adanacs again in 1930 and then by the UBC Varsity club in 1931. In fact, teams from BC dominated the national championships during the 1930s and early 1940s, taking home the title 12 times in the period from 1930 to 1943. Among these remarkable teams were the Victoria Blue Ribbons, featuring Art and Chuck CHAPMAN, Lynn PATRICK and Muzz PATRICK, Doug PEDEN and Porky ANDREWS, and the 1936–37 UBC Varsity, led by the "Gold Dust Twins," Jim Bardsley and Art Willoughby. On the women's side, a team from UBC won the world championships in Prague in 1930 (see UBC WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TEAM).

At the administrative level, coach Ken Wright, a former star with the Adanacs, organized the first successful BC High School Boys tournament in 1946 (the BC Girls Provincials started 2 years later), and Wink Willox pioneered modern officiating with his cross-province clinics and new BC Rules Examination. Willox disciples Bob Hall and Harold Cronk extended his officiating-development legacy through to the 1990s. Wright's tournament emerged as the most popular event in BC high school sport and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1995. Wright was involved every year to 1996 and the championship trophy was eventually named for him. Former UBC star Ken Winslade took over from Wright as the main organizer in the 1960s and ran the tournament for over 30 years.

Some Talented Teams

Victoria produced "BC's team of the century" and perhaps the most talented fully Canadian basketball team of all time, the 1945-46 Dominoes, a club that included the Chapman brothers, Peden, Andrews and Norm BAKER. After winning the national championship that year, the team folded and Art Chapman, Peden, Andrews, Baker and Ritchie Nichol went on to play on BC's first professional basketball team, the Vancouver Hornets, which played 2 seasons in the PNE Forum from 1946 to 1948. Led by Baker, the Hornets posted winning records in both seasons.

As the Meralomas in 1947, and the Clover Leafs in 1948, 1949 and 1951, Vancouver clubs featuring Sandy ROBERTSON, Norm Gloag, Jack POMFRET and Bardsley took over the national title. In 1948, the UBC team were also considered national champs for defeating the Clover Leafs in an Olympic Elimination Tournament. Other Canadian champions included the Alberni Athletics, led by Elmer Speidel, in 1955; the BC Totems in 1957; the Vancouver Eilers in 1958; the Vancouver IGA Grocers, featuring star Billy Joe Price, from 1966 to 1968; and SFU in 1970. John Kootnekoff, a teenage spare on the 1955 Alberni team, went on to play for Seattle Univ in the 1958 NCAA Championship. Bob Houbregs, born in Vancouver in 1932, learned his basketball in Seattle and went on to become a 1953 All-American and NCAA Player of the Year with Washington state, the first overall NBA draft pick and a Basketball Hall of Famer. Meanwhile, between 1940 and 1970, women's teams from BC won 25 national championships, including the Vancouver Eilers, who won from 1950 to 1958. Off the court, coach Ruth WILSON and players Rita Bell and Shirley Topley were all top-notch softball players who competed internationally. Bell was such a talented basketball player she was asked by the Globetrotters' Abe Saperstein to play on his professional women's team.

Playing for Canada

BC basketball extended its Canadian domination to the national program as Bob Osborne led his UBC men's team, with some added Montreal players, to the 1948 Olympics. UBC coach Jack Pomfret was an assistant coach on a 1956 Olympics squad that included 9 British Columbians, among them Bob Pickell and John McLeod, while Ruth Wilson was manager of the women's national team in 1959 and later coach. At the collegiate level, UBC Thunderbirds, with standouts Ron Thorsen and Derek Sankey, won the Canadian Univ Championship in 1970 and 1972, and coach Ken SHIELDS, with help from players Joannne Sargent, Bev Bland, Bev Barnes, Liz Silcott and Kathy Williams (Shields's future wife), took the UBC women to 4 CIAU crowns from 1971 to 1974. One of BC's great all-around athletes, Bob Burrows of Victoria was drafted by the NBA's Seattle SuperSonics in 1969 before pursuing a baseball career in the Kansas City Royals organization. A star of Canada's 1976 Olympic fourth-place basketball entry was flashy guard Billy Robinson of CHEMAINUS, a former SFU standout and a pro player in Europe and Mexico. He was joined on the Olympic team by Sankey and Lars Hansen of COQUITLAM, the first player from BC to appear in the NBA. Hansen played 15 games for the SuperSonics in 1978 and 1979 and was a member of the team during their 1979 NBA championship win. A 2014 inductee into the BC Sports Hall of Fame, he was the most successful BC native in the NBA until Steve NASH became the first local player to become an NBA regular during the 1990s with the Phoenix Suns and the Dallas Mavericks. Nash won league MVP honours in 2005, an unprecedented achievement for a Canadian basketball player, then repeated as MVP in 2006.

The University Level

In university level basketball, Jay TRIANO of Niagara Falls entered SFU in 1977 and became one of the most successful athletes in the school's history, breaking virtually every basketball record while starring internationally for the national team. He was joined on the Canadian team by Eli Pasquale, a Sudbury native who led the UNIV OF VICTORIA Vikings to the first 5 of 7 consecutive Canadian university national championships (1980–86). The Vikings, who once posted a 63-game winning streak and had only one loss in 4 years of intercollegiate play, boast one of the most successful records in all competitive sports. Under the tutelage of future national team coach Ken Shields, top Vikings included VANCOUVER ISLAND players Gerald Kazanowski, Kelly Dukeshire and Greg Wiltjer. Pasquale, Kazanowski and Wiltjer were all NBA draft picks and national-team starters. Wiltjer went on to become Spain's highest-paid basketball player. Ken Shields's wife Kathy began coaching the Vikettes women's basketball team in 1977 and led them to 8 national championships through the 2000 season.

Coach Allison McNeill arrived at SFU in 1988 and led the women's team into 9 consecutive NAIA championship tournaments, also capturing honours as NAIA, Pacific Northwest, US Women's Basketball Coaching Assoc and SPORT BC coach of the year. Major contributions by star players Nikki Johnson, Joby McKenzie, Andrea Schnider and Michelle Hendry of TERRACE, the school's all-time leading scorer, also led to the team's success. McNeill retired from the SFU coaching job in 2001 and became coach of Canada's women's national team for ten years. In 2016 she was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame. Coached by Canada's best-ever female basketball player, Bev SMITH of SALMON ARM, Hendry led Team Canada to Pan Am Games silver in 1999. In men's play, SFU has produced more pro players, mostly in Europe, than UBC and Univ of Victoria combined. Mike Jackel of N VANCOUVER, an All-American who led the NAIA in scoring in 1980 and 1981, went on to become a legend as the all-time leading scorer in German pro basketball, the highest paid Canadian in Europe, the captain of the German national team and a European sports celebrity. SFU product Mark Staley was the only BC player to make the Vancouver Nighthawks, a professional club that played a season in the late 1980s in a league that had a height restriction of 6' 5". The professional game returned in 1995 when Vancouver was granted an NBA franchise and the GRIZZLIES took to the floor at GENERAL MOTORS PLACE for the first time, the culmination of a long history of basketball in the province. Unfortunately, the franchise moved to Memphis in 2001.
by Silas White