Templeton Sports
A Fresh Start
“Ready!” Heavy breathing stops, and ten pairs of sneakers squeak as they step up to the baseline. A shrill whistle pierces the heavy gym air, and the players take off. Thirty seconds later, they arrive back at the baseline, out of breath and bent over, searching in vain for air. Ten slow seconds pass.
“Ready!” The boys push down their complaints and step up the the baseline. Some of these players have repeated this exact scene a thousand times.
Welcome to the Senior Boys Basketball team.
This senior team joins a host of basketball teams at Templeton this year. More students are involved in the basketball program than ever in recent memory. The Titans have seen volunteer coaches come in from across the community just to dig their fingers into this gold mine of a basketball program.
When you walk into the Templeton gym, burgundy walls, gold piping and the massive Titan crest jump out at you. High above, banners hang celebrating championships from years past. Maybe there’s a P.E. block playing soccer, or it’s lunchtime, and dozens of students mill about throwing halfcourt prayers and three point bombs. It could be after school, one of the many school basketball teams running a play, perfecting their every move for the upcoming season.
Sports are alive and well at Templeton Secondary, topped off with badminton club meetings every other morning. Passion is abundant here, as is talent. But this begs the question: where is the success?
Templeton’s sports teams have gone eight years without a championship. Their last was the Juvenile Boys in 2008. This year marks the first in many that Templeton will even field a group of grade nine boys, much less a competitive squad. But the spirit of our school is surging, propelled by a communal love of sports.
Success does not have to be judged by winning a championship. Two years ago, CTV news came to Templeton to interview a team of five girls who, with only the minimum of players available, formed a team of their own. With no extra players to substitute in during games, they each played valiantly for entire games, on the court every minute of play.
Today, that small spark has been kindled into an inferno: a full Senior team, something nonexistent just two years ago. The girls have braced themselves for a jam packed schedule that kicks off in a few weeks, supported by veterans from seasons past.
Success doesn’t have to equal win totals or end-season championships. Once a bleak shell of a program, Templeton’s basketball teams have grown, nurtured by the coaching staff of Dave Braun, Kate Inch, Suk Malli and their collection of outside sources. They now stand ready to take on the rest of the Lower Mainland, starting this December. Check out vancouverschoolsports.com or the schedule posted in the main gym every week.
Ten sweaty bodies crowd together at the end of practice, praised for the work they’ve done in the past three hours. Their minds are on their homework, or the daunting prospect of the season ahead. Some laugh at a joke, some guzzle down water. They put their arms in the air at the center of the circle, crying out together:
“Titans!”
Their voices bounce off the hanging banners, reverberating through history and back down not to the future, and the possibilities of next season, but to the present, and the accomplishments that lie ahead.
Evan Symons, Sports
