A nascent basketball program running out of the Niagara Regional Native Centre (NRNC) is already making its mark across the province.
At the recent Ontario Native Basketball Invitational tournament in Sudbury, organized by Indigenous Wellness and Sport Ontario, Team NRNC, made up of local high school-aged boys, went 3-1, going undefeated in the round-robin stage. They finished the tournament in fourth place, stunning some teams from other locations across the province.
“We lost to a team that was well-coached, very well-rounded,” says coach Quinn Hill. “They went on to win the tournament. We’re still a young team, we lacked size against them, but we gave them a good fight. It’s a good sign that we kept up with those guys.”
Hill says people approached him in Sudbury to let him know how impressed they were with Team NRNC’s performance in their semi-final loss against the squad from Jumpball Player Development, a long-established program from the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation in Renfrew County.
In contrast, the local program began this January at the urging of Pow Wow outreach and fundraising coordinator Willow Shawanoo.
“We had basketball teams years ago, but we had some co-workers who changed positions,” says Wasa-Nabin youth program coordinator Mia Bakker. “Willow really wanted to bring it back. She did all the logistics, and we went to our first tournament at Six Nations in the beginning of February.”
The team practices in the Airport Road native centre gym, which lacks permanently mounted hoops and on a floor not properly marked out for the sport. They roll in two outdoor basketball nets at either end of the gym so Hill and the other coaches can run scrimmages. Watching a recent practice there, though, it doesn’t seem to bother the coaches or the players.
“We’d love to get some permanent hoops mounted,” admits Hill, who recently began working at the NRNC as its healthy living coordinator for youth. “We’re looking to get into a high school in the area, but it would be nice to have our own facilities here for basketball.”
Right now, most of the funding for the program goes toward getting the kids to the tournaments. The native centre provides the means of travel as well as accommodations, food and the entry fees for the players.
“We have quite a few youth for whom this could never have happened on their own,” Bakker says. “For families with five or six kids, this isn’t something they would be able to do. This gives them an opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise have.”
The program goes a long way toward building the confidence of those involved, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic and, as Bakker adds, the fallout from the discovery of so many unmarked graves at old residential school sites in the last two years.
“We still feel that trauma today,” Bakker says. “These youth are feeling it. These kids are trying to find their way and feel safe. Being on this basketball team gives them a safe space where they can fit in and work together. They’ve found good friends in each other.”
At the recent provincial tournament the boys were still getting to know one another. But a week later Bakker witnessed them bonding at a Youth and Elders session in Fort Erie, joking and sharing stories together.
Hill, who lives in Fort Erie, was one of the players who represented the NRNC at tournaments from 2014 to 2018, when they won both the Six Nations Rez Hoops Tournament and another event in Thunder Bay. But he says there wasn’t really a program back then. It was more of a team that was pieced together for the purpose of entering those tournaments.
Hill was trying to get the program started up in 2020, but the pandemic made that impossible. Now 22 years old, he is too old to compete in the tournaments, but was happy to step up and organize the practices on Wednesday and Friday evenings at the centre.
“I’m only two or three years older than some of them,” Hill says. “It’s fun to hang around with them, and I feel they do respect me and the other coaches. We’re all young, and we’re all learning together, which I think is pretty good.”
Bakker says that as an urban Indigenous community centre, no one is turned away from the NRNC’s new basketball program. That means that Team NRNC is not solely made up of youth with Indigenous roots but also includes some friends of members of the native centre, such as its youngest player, Demarco Perry.
“My friend at school is Native, and he told me to come and try out for the team,” says the Grade 9 student at Denis Morris Catholic Secondary School. “It’s been a lot of fun playing with these guys. And I had a great time at the tournament.”
Shawanoo does the groundwork, hunting down the Indigenous tournaments for the team to enter. Some tournaments, however, demand that all players have Indigenous status. That means players such as Perry have to sit those out.
Basketball mixes with cultural sessions and performances at these Native tournaments, too. Both Hill and Bakker spoke highly of the singing, drumming and dancing which were part of the opening ceremonies in Sudbury.
Sean Vanderklis, recently appointed a director at the NRNC, was along for the ride to the provincial tournament to watch his son, Nodin Buck, and his nephew compete.
Vanderklis feels that the tournament was a big success for the fledgling program.
“They’ve only been playing together for two months,” he marvels. “A lot of the teams that we were playing have been working together for five-plus years. They have a sense of cohesion that we are still in the process of developing.”
He continues, “Some of our boys have never played anything more than schoolyard basketball. They’re still learning. They’re at various levels of basketball IQ. My son, for example, is very good at pick-and-rolls, he knows where teammates should go, whereas others are still learning.”
Also along for the ride to Sudbury were four young female basketball players from the local Native centre, playing as part of the regional Team Flight, who captured the bronze medal at the provincial tournament.
“A lot of the community wanted a girls team, too,” Bakker says. “We didn’t have a lot of girls that came out. So Willow decided to connect with this regional team, and four of our girls now play with them.”
Team Flight was begun in 2014 by former Six Nations resident Jon Nolan, now living in Gravenhurst. It’s an elite Native girls’ team featuring Indigenous female basketball players aged 14 to 18 years old from across Ontario.
Bakker says the NRNC girls had never really had a chance to practice with their teammates until they went to the Rez Hoops tournament at Six Nations in February, where they won a silver medal. And they will finally get a full practice session on March 19, when they travel to Rama to gather with their teammates.
Team Flight will be heading back up to Sudbury next month for another tournament, while Hill hopes to take Team NRNC to Winnipeg’s Hoop It Up tournament in May, another Indigenous tournament in Ottawa and potentially one in Arizona.
As far as the boys’ team is concerned, Vanderklis says they couldn’t have a better leader than Hill.
“He’s taken the helm of the ship this year providing strategic direction,” he says. “He’s a phenomenal coach and a great role model and mentor. The kids have really taken to him.”
