The dynasty comes to an end

St. Mary Secondary is the most successful senior girls basketball program in Ontario history. A lack of players means no team this year

If you glance at the Catholic high school senior girls basketball schedule this fall, you’ll notice something missing.

St. Mary Secondary.

“St. Mary did not have enough student athletes come out to participate in the tryout process,” says Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board athletic convener Patrick Brennan.

Too few interested players equals no team. So the Crusaders are out. So what’s the big deal?

St. Mary isn’t just a basketball team. It is the most successful girls basketball program in Ontario history. This is a school that’s won 15 OFSAA gold medals. No other AAA or AAAA school has more than five. This is the only school ever to win six provincial championships in a row. No other school did it more than four straight times.

“It’s by a long shot the greatest success story maybe in North America,” says Joe Raso, who’s been a key part of the local basketball community for decades.

Raso says he once looked and couldn’t find any high school on the

continent that had won as many state or provincial titles.

Yet today, there aren’t enough players to form a team.

“That is very shocking,” says Christina Buttenham, who went from being a Crusader to a scholarship athlete at the University of Iowa and later a national champion at McMaster. It really is.

Not sure there’s a definitive answer to why it’s happened. Crusaders coach Hilary Hanaka and former coach Rich Wesolowski didn’t want to be quoted for this piece.

But there are theories. Starting with the simple fact that high school sports have changed significantly over the past 10 or 15 years.

“If anyone told you it was the same, I think they’re nostalgic,” says former McMaster men’s coach Amos Connolly, who’s now coaching the Transway U14 girls team.

A big reason? Prep schools. Not that long ago, elite players were being recruited out of local high schools. Shona Thorburn and Kia Nurse starred at U.S. colleges on scholarships, played for the national team and went pro in the WNBA. They went to Westdale and St. Thomas More, respectively.

Today, many elite athletes are leaving their traditional high schools to go to specialized training academies. Truth is, almost all the Hamiltonians who’ve gone south to play American college basketball in recent years have come out of that system. Nurse’s father, Richard — who’s also head coach of the Hamilton-based Lincoln Prep’s women’s team — says 100 per cent of the girls from Ontario who are on the national team depth chart are playing prep.

“Kids that are serious and feel that they might have an opportunity to play at the next level … the draw to go to a prep school or an academy is just becoming greater and greater,” says McMaster women’s coach Theresa Burns.

Could this really be having that much impact?

Raso thinks so. Nurse and Connolly concur. Longtime St. Mary player and assistant coach Jessie Lamparski buys it. Even the chair of the Catholic school board agrees.

“For sure it’s a factor,” says Pat Daly, whose two daughters played for St. Mary.

By peeling away so much of the top talent — or simply the best athletes — the level of play at traditional schools has dipped. As it’s fallen, the idea that school sports are a big deal may have been affected. Being part of a school team may simply not mean what it once did.

There’s a theory that there could be a silver lining to all this. This migration of top players from traditional schools could open roster spots to those who otherwise wouldn’t make it. More kids could play. Except that doesn’t seem to have happened. Not in the St. Mary situation, anyway.

There are other possible factors in play.

St. Mary is a small school. The field of potential players isn’t enormous. Getting into university has become harder, so some may not be committing to a team in order to have more time to study. And when COVID-19 shut down school sports, a number of kids around town found other things to do. Including, for some, part-time jobs.

“They started seeing money for the first time,” says Lamparski, now the head of athletics at Cathedral High School.

Still, seeing any Catholic school in Hamilton struggle to put a team on the court is a surprise. Especially in basketball, which has traditionally been this city’s strength. With artificial turf fields and nice gyms, this school board has clearly made sports an important part of the student experience. But the Crusaders? The powerhouse of all girls basketball powerhouses? Buttenham won four OFSAA gold medals playing for them. Lamparski won three. Daly’s eldest daughter won one. All say what’s happening is disappointing. Lamparski uses another word that they all share.

“It’s sad for me to see St. Mary not have a team.”

If you’re a fan of high school sports, you might want to add one more: Concerning.