Provincial basketball tourney expected to populate Ontario teams for NAIG

By Sam Laskaris
Windspeaker Contributor
THUNDER BAY, Ont.

The Ontario Nish Basketball Invitational (ONBI), for the third consecutive year, will be staged in Ontario in 2017.

The youth tournament is scheduled for March 17 to 19 and will be significantly more important than the previous two years of the tourney. That’s because the event is considered the final opportunity for basketball players from across the province to showcase their skills in front of coaches who will be in charge of Ontario teams for next summer’s North American Indigenous Games (NAIG).

Matches are scheduled to be staged at Lakehead University.

The inaugural Nish Tourney was held in Rama in 2015 and attracted 16 teams (eight female and eight male).

That event featured just one age grouping, under 19. The same number of clubs participated in one division at the 2016 tournament, staged in Timmins.

As for next year’s event, organizers are hoping they have sufficient interest to stage female and male under-14, under-16 and under-19 divisions. Ideally they would like to get eight squads in each division, for both females and males.

The Aboriginal Sport and Wellness Council of Ontario (ASWCO) is once again organizing the ONBI.

“It would be nice to have a full tournament for each category,” said Heather Collins, who is ASWCO’s North Central program co-ordinator. “We might have to find another venue to have some of the games. But it would be great if we could accommodate all three categories.”

ASWCO officials started staging various tryouts for NAIG sports in August of this year. Tryouts have been held for basketball at various southern Ontario locations.

Athletes will not necessarily have to compete at the ONBI in order to be included on Ontario’s basketball squads that will compete at the NAIG, set for July 16 to 23, primarily in Toronto.

But Collins is still hoping to see as many basketball players as possible at the Thunder Bay tournament.

“We’re hoping kids from all over Ontario come to our event,” she said. “This one will probably be the one that is the most monitored.”

Tournament organizers are accepting both individual and team registrations. The registration deadline is Feb. 3.