Congratulations to the Sheridan Bruins men’s basketball team, who earned a silver medal at the national championship tournament hosted by Langara College in Langley, B.C. on March 17.
After trailing by as many as 15 points in the first half, the team climbed all the way back to hold a six-point advantage entering the fourth quarter but fell just short and suffered an 85-82 loss to VIU in the national championship game.
“We were so good in clawing back from down 15,” says head coach Jim Flack. “That is just character – pure and inspiring. Nick (Campbell), Tre (Anderson), and AJ (Thompson) were workhorses. Stef (Simpson) was a true leader, Khaleek (Bakari-Whyte) was counter punching all the way, and Romar Subban? What can you say – what a spark plug he has become.”
Jim says he couldn’t be prouder of the way his team represented themselves, their school, and their local communities.
“When you step back and look at the makeup of this group – mostly Peel, largely Brampton, with a sprinkling of Toronto – it’s a wonderful tale of local kids achieving something special,” he says. “No mercenary players were brought in to win a title. These are just kids who are products of ROPSSAA, BMBA, and the Mississauga Monarchs and they hung an OCAA banner and made a run to the Canadian final. The story will be lost in a market like Toronto – but it’s not lost on us.”
This is the second national championship appearance in three years for the Bruins, who earned their spot by defeating their Humber rivals in the 2019 OCAA Championship Game on March 2. When the Bruins made the national final in 2017, it snapped a 10-year drought since they had last played in the season’s final game. Now – with a core group still in place – Jim expresses great optimism about what the future holds for the members of the 2018-19 men’s basketball team.
“One of my favourite Churchill quotes is this: ‘Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.’ These young men will be the embodiment of that,” he says.
Way to go, Bruins!