It was two years ago in Indonesia when the future of Murphy Burnatowski’s basketball career hung in the balance. The toll professional basketball took on the 6-foot-7 sharpshooter's body had caught up with him. Burnatowski was playing for the BBM CLS Knights in Indonesia in 2020 when the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic put the world of professional sports on hold. Time away from basketball allowed Burnatowski to focus on his nagging left knee injury. The pandemic provided Burnatowski with the opportunity to rest his left knee, which had troubled him throughout his career. After consulting doctors, Burnatowksi underwent surgery in April of 2021. Nearly two years later, at the age of 30, Burnatowski made his triumphant return to professional basketball when he suited up for the Edmonton Stingers at the Basketball Champions League Americas (BCLA). Doubt surrounded the Kitchener native's career before and after his surgery. Months later, upon receiving clearance from doctors, Burnatowski put on a Stingers jersey and stepped onto the hardwood once again when the Stingers took on Real Estelí on Dec. 13, 2021. Burnatowski scored the Stinger’s first-ever points at the BCLA with a pure three-pointer from the wing – a shot he has made countless times throughout his career. Burnatowski scored 15 points in his return, knocking down three-of-five three-point attempts. "It's been a long road to recovery over the last couple of years and I've been unsure if I was going to play again," Burnatowski said. It was a storybook return as the Stingers defeated Real Estelí 84-81. Soon to be teammates Alex Campbell and Malcolm Duvivier joined Burnatowski on the roster for group phases two and three of the BCLA round-robin Burnatowski's rehab focused solely on strength and conditioning – basketball was not the focus. "It was honestly almost 100 percent strength and conditioning once I got the surgery. The first six months were just purely in the weight room. I don't even think I touched a basketball for the most part. I'm probably in the best shape of my life because of it," Burnatowski said. Despite being 20 months removed from playing professional basketball, Burnatowski discovered a new passion – coaching. The forward joined the Dalhousie Tigers men’s basketball program as an assistant coach. With time away from playing the game, Burnatowski credits the transition from player to coach as a key reason for helping him see the game differently. Recently announced as the newest member of the Bandits, the veteran forward, can see himself as a contributing voice in the locker room in support of new head coach Mike Taylor. "Mike has coached at some high levels. I know the type of coach he's going to be and a lot of times the power forward position can be an extension, just like a point guard can," Burnatowski said. Taylor will be tasked with taking a Bandits team that is expected to feature some new faces on its roster, as well as returning cast members like Campbell and Duvivier and making the group mesh into a cohesive core ahead of Fraser Valley’s first game on May 25 against Ottawa. Taylor believes that the veteran presence of Burnatowski can assist his staff with helping the group learn on the fly once training camp opens in mid-May. "He's a guy that makes his teammates better out there on the court and he reads the game extremely well. If you talk about a guy that can impact the game from the frontcourt, I think Murphy is that,” Taylor said. “He'll hit threes, rebound and he'll post up. But more importantly, is his decision-making. On every possession, you trust him with the ball.”

A multi-gold medalist at the World Championships and Paralympics in wheelchair basketball, Marni Abbott-Peter shares her journey to representing Canada on the biggest stages in the world.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Langley Times (Black Press)

Paula Thompson now finds herself as a school counsellor at Abbotsford Senior Secondary. But every now and then, the former head coach finds time to make an eight-minute drive to visit her previous home at W.J. Mouat Secondary to see familiar faces and joke around with students on whether they remember her. They have no clue. Ten years have passed since the 2010-11 W.J. Mouat Hawks senior girls basketball team won the B.C. AAA provincial championships, the first in school history. Like their head coach, all of the players from that senior starting lineup have moved on. All graduated and several went on to play Canadian university basketball. But despite the passage of time and the subsequent struggle to remember the intricacies of a historic time, one never forgets the climactic moment when the final buzzer sounds and a dream becomes reality. “It was such an amazing time for the school, but unless you were a part of that time – I don’t know what the wording is exactly but – the memory is only for those who really were a part of it,” Thompson said. “Because it doesn’t mean anything to the people who weren’t.” There was forward Katie Brink and guard Jaslyen Singh, who could shoot the ball and run the floor as the team’s secondary playmaker when needed. Guard Ashleyn Sarowa, who despite her small frame, was fearless when it came to driving to the hoop. Jennah Bryce was the defensive minded forward, whose focus was using her long reach to crash the glass and to do all the little things right in order to help her teammates flourish. And then there was Kayli Sartori, the elite-scoring forward who Thompson could rely on when it counted the most. It was a group defined by team chemistry that began brewing during their days playing together in middle school. It was all part of a four-year plan devised by Thompson in 2007 to take a group of ninth graders and mold them into a championship contender by their Grade 12 year. They may not have been the most talented bunch, Sartori said, but they had a fighter’s spirit. On the court, they were “friggin’ warriors.”