After nearly three years of waiting, the CFB Halifax men’s basketball team reclaimed the title of Canadian Armed Forces Atlantic Region Basketball champions. The Mariners took down teams from 12 Wing Shearwater, 14 Wing Greenwood and their rivals from 5 Canadian Division Support Base Gagetown to win gold at the 2023 regional championship January 24 to 27 at the Shearwater Fitness and Sports Centre.
14 Wing Greenwood had a tough tournament, including a 48-point loss to Halifax, but Lieutenant Jon Wilson – a 10-year CISM basketball team member, says the scores don’t tell Greenwood’s full story.
“It was just an awesome team event,” he says. “We never had a complete practice, we lost most of our games – but I’m so proud of this team. We got together – we were SO together!”
Wilson highlights several team-defining moments, including one in that deep Halifax loss.
“When you’re losing by that much, you keep the ball in your half, generally. So, Ramy (Second Lieutenant Ramy Nader, with Wing Comptroller) gets the ball – it’s his first tournament. He took a step back jump shot – not easy to hit. He made the shot with 1.5 seconds left. The guys were screaming! They all rushed the floor. That was the team; that was us, bonding. It was really awesome to see.”
Corporal Warren Reimer (Construction Engineering): “brand new to basketball, incredibly athletic and hungry to learn – and that was really infections,” Wilson says. “He wanted to know what he was doing wrong, and how to fix it.”
That spread: Corporal Tony Botran (14 Air Maintenance Squadron) “took advice and executed it,” along with Second Lieutenant Drrick Haines (14 Operations Support Squadron).
“That really turned the team.”
Despite round-robin losses against Gagetown (78-56) and Halifax (76-29), Greenwood still finished third overall with a 68-43 win over 12 Wing. Wilson calls the semifinal against Gagetown a “vast improvement:” while still a 84-72 loss, Aviator Evan Trites, a firefighter in his first year on the team, with his wife, parents and grandparents in the stands; scored 33 points.
“Warren, Tony, Ramy, all the guys – they just trusted him to take the ball and get stuff done. There was no ego, no pride. It was just, ‘let’s get Evan the ball, group around him and go!’ We were so fluid in our fourth game.”
Halifax will represent the Atlantic region at the CAF national basketball championship later this winter – the first since 2019. There was plenty of pressure on the Halifax squad to win regional gold after losing to Gagetown in 2020, the last time regionals were held. That loss broke an impressive 17-year gold streak for the Halifax. This year’s championship game was far from a blowout, as Gagetown was up by 12 points at halftime, before Halifax rallied, shutting down their opponents and ending with a 79-68 victory.
Back at 14 Wing, Wilson is beside himself with enthusiasm for what lies ahead.
“It’s been seven years since Greenwood had a good basketball team, and these guys – a lot of them are new and staying. I’m so excited for the future of this team.”
Wilson, himself heading off to the CAF CISM basketball trials in the next few weeks, has a full calendar planned for his return: adding a few of the men’s team players to Greenwood Minor Basketball’s coaching volunteers (he’s the club president), basketball-focused lifting days, skills training days, an August start to next year’s team practices….
