Front Row (L to R): Mike Bean, Ryan Morrison, Kyle Robbins, Rob Shaw, Scott Currie, Ron Debusschere (Manager), Back Row: (L to R): Dave Kent (Assistant Coach), P.J. Hamilton, Jeremy Derksen, Mark Oulds, Andy Fantuz, Kevin Kloostra, Allan Cattrysse, Dan Lewis (Head Coach)

The John McGregor Secondary School senior boys basketball team of 2001-2002 was arguably the best boys basketball team ever to represent Chatham and certainly the best offensive team ever. Twelve times they scored more than 90 points, unheard of in high school, and once they scored over 100. Coaches Lewis and Kent were not in favor of embarrassing other teams by hitting the “century mark” as coach Lewis liked to refer to it but with this team that was difficult to avoid given their offensive talent. Without the implementation of multiple strategies to avoid doing so it would have been a forgone conclusion that this team could have hit that mark in most of the games they played.

They won their first three games at OFSAA 4A including what may have been their best game of the season against Markham’s Milken Mills, a team who had two players who would go on to NCAA playing careers and another provincial team player. Following that exhausting victory the night before, the team played Eastern Commerce the next morning losing in the semi-finals (85-73). Eastern Commerce would go on to win the championship that year. In fact, Eastern Commerce were so good that they would go on to win OFSAA 4A the next three years. The Panthers finished 4th narrowly losing to Burlington Nelson 64-62 in the bronze medal game at OFSAA’s highest level.

The Panthers finished the season with an overall record of 50 – 8 and won 25 consecutive games before losing in the OFSAA 4A semi-finals. They lost eight games but only lost to five different high schools, two games to Burlington Nelson (by one and two points) and three games to Eastern Commerce. Six players from this Eastern Commerce team would later play basketball in the U.S. on scholarship and four others would play on Canadian college teams.

Facts:

• The team won 50 games, more than any other Chatham high school team has ever won in a season.
• They could easily have won OFSAA 2A as they had done the previous two years or 3A where they had already beaten the province’s top teams but moved up to the top category (4A) where they placed fourth at OFSAA.
• The team won a Christmas university tournament which is quite an accomplishment that had been done only twice prior and not since by any Chatham team. Universities use their invitational tournaments as a recruiting tool and normally invite teams that have one or more outstanding players so it’s difficult for a Chatham school to get invited let alone win. The 2001-02 team received invitations to two university tournaments, Windsor and Western, winning the former.
• The team was composed of several exceptional ‘all-round’ athletes who went on to athletic success after high school. Kevin Kloostra played basketball on scholarship for one year at Binghampton University in NY, returned to star at the university of Windsor, and represented Canada on its National Developmental Team. Andy Fantuz had an outstanding college football career at Western University and had one of the top CFL careers a Canadian receiver has ever had. Alan Cattrysse received a baseball scholarship to Michigan State University where he played for four years, batting .342 in his final year.