“A TDCAA Championship and an OFSAA medal.”
Those were the two goals Richard Gallacher, Mother Teresa Catholic Secondary School’s senior boy’s basketball coach, set out to accomplish at the beginning of this season.
The Titans successfully achieved these goals after earning a silver medal at the AAAA Ontario Federation of School Athletic Association (OFSAA) tournament and winning the Toronto District College Athletic Association (TDCAA) finals.
They finished their league’s regular season by claiming the division A TDCAA championship after routing Father Henry Carr Catholic secondary School by a score of 67-46. Entering the OFSAA tournament with a 35-5 record the Titans were expected to do well but Eastern Commerce was still the favourite, since they ranked number one in the province.
In the first two days of the tournament, Mother Teresa breezed through the opening rounds with an average margin of victory of 33 points. While St. Marguerite d’Youville from Brampton presented a challenge it was nothing that Ashton Khan and Maurice Walker couldn’t handle; Khan scored 24 points while Walker scored 22.
Their first real test came in the semi-finals against the Pickering Trojans who were the eventual bronze medalists. Gallacher wanted to play against.the Trojans for a while.
“We still never played Pickering. I think they’re ranked ahead of us. It’s hard to tell where we’re going,” Gallacher said, in January.
The Trojans were the two-time defending OFSAA champs. Gallacher’s team passed that test with flying colours after a decisive 60-44 victory over Pickering, led by Jonathan Alexander’s 22 point outing.
In a heartbreaking game that went down to the wire, the Titans barely lost to the Eastern Commerce in the finals by a score of 50-49. Mother Teresa came with a balanced attack, with Ryan Augustine dropping 11 points. Ashton Khan and Onnex Blackwood both scored 10. Eastern Commerce did a good job of containing Titans star Maurice Walker.
Walker was one of five players recently named the Toronto Star high school basketball all-star team. He averaged 20 points and 14 rebounds per game this season. He is considering multiple offers to college teams in the United States next year. Titans guard, Ashton Khan was also mentioned in the Star’s annual all-star list.
