The late Oak Bay Secondary basketball coaching legend Gary Taylor once told the Times Colonist the heartbeat of a school could be found in its gymnasium. As a career principal and vice-principal, he felt the same about the drama theatre and band room and the fields outside that surround most schools.
Taylor died last December but his legacy lives on in the annual Gary Taylor High School Boys’ Basketball Classic, which begins today at Oak Bay in the gym named in his honour. The tournament will feature the sa国际传媒 top-ranked Quad-A team, Spectrum Thunder, top-ranked Triple-A team, St. Thomas More Knights of Burnaby, and top-ranked Double-A team, Pacific Academy Breakers of Surrey.
This high school season on the Island is harkening to the days when Taylor coached Oak Bay to six Island championships and four sa国际传媒 championship-game appearances in the 1960s. Taylor’s Bays won the sa国际传媒 high school crown in 1965 and 1968 and lost in championship games twice to the arch-rival Vic High Totems in all-Island finals in 1966 and 1969 before Taylor went on to became head coach of the University of Victoria in 1970, laying the early foundation for the Ken Shields-coached Vikes’ national championship dynasty of the 1980s with players such as Olympians Eli Pasquale, Gerald Kazanowski and Greg Wiltjer.
The top-three ranked Quad-A boys’ teams in sa国际传媒 this season are from the Island — Spectrum Thunder No. 1, Dover Bay Dolphins No. 2 and Oak Bay No. 3. The Thunder are the defending provincial Quad-A champions and Dolphins the defending sa国际传媒 Triple-A champions, the latter moving up to Quad-A this season based on its increased student population numbers.
But there are only two Island berths available in the sa国际传媒 championship tournament in March at the Langley Events Centre, meaning one of the top-three Quad-A teams in the province won’t qualify. Observers are comparing it to the Robert Sacre situation in which the former NBA Los Angeles Lakers and Canadian national team player led the Handsworth Royals to the 2006 sa国际传媒 high school championship in Grade 11 and was named MVP but didn’t qualify in Grade 12 after his top-ranked Royals were shocked in an upset by West Vancouver in the Howe Sound playdowns in a region that has only one berth into provincials.
“It’s healthy and fair,” said Oak Bay head coach Chris Franklin, despite that his provincial third-ranked team might be such a victim this season.
“There were years when the Fraser Valley faced similar situations but you didn’t see any of the other districts willing to give up their spots for them.”
The Gary Taylor tournament, meanwhile, will feature UVic’s blockbuster recruiting class of defending sa国际传媒 tournament MVP Tyler Felt and fellow-standout Justin Hinrichsen, son of former UVic great and Olympian Eric Hinrichsen, with Spectrum and defending Island tournament MVP Toren Franklin of Oak Bay, nephew of the Bays coach.
“That’s an impressive group of kids and congratulations to [UVic head coach] Murphy Burnatowski,” said Oak Bay bench boss Chris Franklin.
Burnatowski has described the trio as: “Unique players with no selfish mentality, as sometimes happens with high school players, who like to put up as many points as they can. They do not force anything. They take what the defence gives them.”
Host Oak Bay opens the Taylor Classic today against the Belmont Bulldogs at 11 a.m., the Rutland Thunder play the Heritage Woods Kodiaks of Port Moody at 12:45 p.m., the sa国际传媒 Double-A No. 7 Lambrick Park Lions meet Pacific Academy at 2:30 p.m. and Spectrum plays the Fleetwood Park Dragons of Surrey at 4:50 p.m. St. Thomas More and the sa国际传媒 Quad-A No. 7 St. George’s Saints of Vancouver will meet teams from earlier games tonight at 7 p.m. and 8:45. Action resumes all day Friday with the semifinals at 7:15 and 9 p.m. The championship game is Saturday at 6 p.m.
TIP-OFFS: The sa国际传媒 Quad-A top-three of Spectrum, Dover Bay and Oak Bay will be in the Vancouver College Emerald Classic next month, the appetizer for what is expected to be a torridly-contested Island championship tournament in February at Dover Bay, out of which only two of those teams will advance to the provincial tournament in March at the Langley Events Centre.
