Spectrum and Windsor climb their way into record books after high school boys basketball’s Championship Saturday

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Here’s a vote for Jonathan Kinman as the happiest person at the high school boys basketball provincial finals.

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There were lots of other candidates. There always is. Championship Saturday at the Langley Events Centre ended this time around with the Spectrum Thunder of Saanich becoming the first program since the 2001-02 Kitsilano Blue Demons to win back-to-back titles at the top tier thanks to an 81-66 win over Nanaimo’s Dover Bay Dolphins in the Quad A finale.

Before that, you had North Vancouver’s Windsor Dukes at Triple A beating Burnaby’s St. Thomas More Knights 66-58 to add a basketball provincial banner to the football and soccer ones they won earlier this season. And at Double A, it was Surrey’s Pacific Academy Breakers outlasting the Summerland Rockets 80-69 with co-coach Joel Ashbee and several players slated to head to the Dominican Republic Sunday for a two-week mission.

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Festivities Saturday began with Kinman, the longtime coach of the St. John’s Eagles, and his charges from the Kitsilano school defeating Chilliwack’s Unity Christian Flames 87-82 for the Single A crown and their first title.

Kinman has been coaching at St. John’s for 24 years. The school didn’t have its own gymnasium when he started — that came in 2011 — and he hosted their first invitational tournament at the old Vancouver Grizzlies training centre in Richmond. They went on to play home games for a time at the Kitsilano Community Centre.

He clearly enjoyed Saturday. As the game was winding down, he was saluting people in the stands, pointing at them and tapping his heart. He did the same with Unity Christian coach David Bron. Saturday marked Unity Christian’s fifth-straight trip to the finals; they’ve won three of those.

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He went over and hugged Bron after the final horn. He hugged loads of people. He might have set a world record for hugs in a minute. The energy was evident. You could have driven your EV to Alaska off Kinman power Saturday.

“Oh, yeah, I’m a wreck,” Kinman said when asked afterwards if he thought he’d be that emotional. “I cried during the national anthem. This is just so big.”

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Paul Eberhardt was among those who searched out Kinman for congratulatory embrace in the bedlam that immediately followed the game’s end. Eberhardt is a longtime boys basketball executive board member and a mainstay of the tournament organizing. He said that Kinman was instrumental in Single A joining the other tiers at the LEC for the finals, and he lauded Kinman was championing that level of basketball so passionately.

As it happens, Kinman did exactly some of that when asked about his conversation post game with Bron.

“I told him that I love him,” Kinman said of their post-game meeting. “The 1-A coaching fraternity, we’re all brothers. We all love each other. And I thanked him for making me beat the best team in 1-A basketball … it has been for the last five years. They’re a credit to basketball anywhere and that guy deserves to be in a hall of fame somewhere for what he’s done over the last four or five years.”

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Unity Christian, the No. 3 seed in this tournament, had the lead on No. 1 St. John’s for 34 minutes, 58 seconds on the game. With 1:26 remaining, Eagles Grade 12 guard Viv Anderson-Francois got a lay-in to go while being fouled and drained the foul shot that followed to put his team up 81-78. That was part of a 12-0 run that was St. John’s biggest of the game, and the five-point final difference was the Eagles’ largest lead of the contest.

Anderson-Francois finished with 29 points, 22 rebounds and nine assists and was later named tournament most valuable player.

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In Quad A, the No. 2 seeded Dolphins cut Spectrum’s lead to 60-58 with 6:09 remaining on a three-pointer by Grade 10 guard Joe Linder, but that’s as close they would come. The No. 1 Thunder followed with a 13-5 run to quiet the comeback. 

Saturday’s crowd maxed out at an estimated 5,500 for the Quad A game, which is an impressive number considering it was two Vancouver Island schools squaring off. It was the first all-Island finale at the top tier since 1978, which featured the Nanaimo District Islanders downing the Oak Bay Bays 71-62.

Boys basketball added Quad A in 2014 and it took over all the Triple A history then.

Spectrum had two eighth-place finishes to show for their seven trips to the provincials before last year, so their 92-72 win over Surrey’s Tamanawis Wildcats in the championship then caught some by surprise. They were far from a secret this time around, with their 12 returnees leading to them having the No. 1 spot in the pre-season rankings.

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They finished the season 37-2, with losses to both Dover Bay and Oak Bay. Oak Bay hovered around the top of the rankings all season long — they were No. 1 in the penultimate provincial poll on Feb. 19 — but didn’t qualify for the tournament since the Vancouver Island only receives two berths and the Bays fell 90-80 to the Dolphins in the game for that second spot.

“Island basketball is the best it’s ever been,” Spectrum coach Tyler Verde said. “We’ve competed against those guys. We’ve been grinding against them and, honestly, working together. It’s really, really helped our team and their teams. It’s been really special.”

Grade 12 centre Tyler Felt had 22 points, 10 rebounds and four blocks for the winners. Grade 12 guard Justin Hinrichsen added 11 points, 16 rebounds, four assists and four steals for Spectrum, while Grade 12 guard J Elijah Helman had 21 points 

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Grade 12 guard Frank Linder scored 28 points for Dover Bay. Little brother Joe Linder added 18 points. 

Dorian Glogovac, a Grade 12 guard with the third-place St. George’s Saints of Vancouver, was named tournament most valuable player. He had 39 points in the Saints’ 78-75 bronze-medal win over Port Coquitlam’s Terry Fox Ravens, and 53 points in an 81-79 loss for the No. 5 seeds to Spectrum in Friday’s semifinals. That 53 points is the fifth-best single-game output in tournament history. 

The provincials date back to 1946 and the Thunder are just the seventh program to win consecutive titles at the top level. Duke of Connaught (1950-52) are the lone squad to win three in a row. 

The Thunder’s 16-player roster this time around featured 12 Grade 12s, so winning again would be with a new core group. 

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Verde admitted that the two championship seasons had different feels to them.

“Last year, we were a total surprise,” Verde said. “No one had heard of Spectrum in a really long time. This one, we were the villains or the targeted or whatever you want to say. We felt more pressure but at the same time it felt like were doing something even more special.”

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Meanwhile, Windsor becomes the first program since the 1997-98 Richmond Colts to win both basketball and football in the same school year. B.C. School Sports doesn’t have a record of a school winning basketball, football and soccer all in the same year. Richmond’s soccer team did come in third that season.

Windsor captured Double A soccer and Double A football in November. Wolves coach Marco Fong said that his team had five football players and one soccer player.

“They know how to win — right?” Fong explained. “They know how to work. They know what it takes to be champions. I think that’s part of it — the mentality that they have.”

The No. 2 seeded Wolves outrebounded the No. 1 Knights by a 55-35 count on the game, and they led the scoreboard for 33:18. 

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Guard 12 forward Perrin Taylor had 13 points and 11 rebounds for the winners and was later named tourney most valuable player. Grade 11 guard Oscar Rouillard had 18 points.

Grade 12 guard Zeru Abera notched 24 points for STM.

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In Double A, Pacific Academy was led by Grade 11 guard Judah Ashbee and his 34 points, to go with seven rebounds. He was later named the tourney MVP.

He’s the son of co-coach Joel Ashbee, who’s also a humanities teacher at the school. He talked about going home after the game and getting ready for the trip. Pacific Academy is a private Christian school and missions are a part of the school curriculum.

“The world is literally cheering on PA right now. We have eight to nine missions teams across the world right now,” he said. “We’re going to the Dominican Republic and it feels incredible.”

The elder Ashbee also spoke about how the team was “used to playing in the East Gym at 9 a.m. on Saturday,” which is reserved for teams finishing at the bottom of the standings. This was Pacific Academy’s 13th trip to the Double A provincials. Their previous best finish was third last season.

“This program has been built over a decade and a half. We’ve got alumni here from years and years ago that are crying because we all share in this,” he said. “It felt like a dream when we walked in here tonight and saw all the pageantry. I had to keep saying ‘I think this is real.’ I’m hoping I don’t wake up, guys.”

@SteveEwen

SEwen@postmedia.com

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