Rothesay Netherwood School (RNS) is honouring the legacy of a former student and basketball captain.
The school’s pre-season invitational basketball tournament has been renamed after Andrew Milner.
Milner, who graduated from the prep school in 2017, died in a tragic canoeing accident in British Columbia in 2019.
Damian Gay, head coach of the school’s basketball team, said they hope to make the Milner Invitational Basketball Tournament an annual event.
“We want to be able to bring in good speakers that talk about resilience and how to overcome obstacles and everything I know Andrew had to go through and every athlete has to go through,” Gay said in a recent interview.
First basketball prep program recruit
Milner was the very first recruit to Rothesay Netherwood School’s basketball prep program several years ago.
Gay said when he first started talking to Milner and his family in 2015, they were a single A basketball team that did not win any games.
“There were a lot of things with him that he immediately believed in when he talked to me, and I recruited a lot of kids,” he said.
“We kept getting better and better, more and more people kept buying into the dream which, over time, became a plan.”
Rothesay Netherwood went from not winning any games to being undefeated and top in the country in 2020 — three years after Milner graduated.
Gay said they had a good group of players that year, including two who played with Milner when he was captain.
“We always knew that we were going to do something big to honour Andrew and his legacy for having come here on the dream of playing prep basketball and actually only playing single A to build to that. We thought it was the right thing to do to honour him,” he said.
A rising basketball star
At the time of his death, Milner, who hailed from Nova Scotia, was a kinesiology student playing for the University of Calgary Dinos and recognized as a rising basketball star.
Gay says Milner’s family is honoured by the fact the school has named an annual basketball tournament after him.
Five schools will take part in this weekend’s tournament: Rothesay Netherwood, Crandall University, King’s College, Thetford Academy, and Cégep de Sainte-Foy.
The weekend also includes a banquet dinner featuring special guest speaker Carl English, a former professional basketball player and general manager for the St. John’s Edge of the National Basketball League of Canada.
A portion of the proceeds from the weekend tournament will be donated to the 4AM Basketball Camp in Nova Scotia, which supports an annual scholarship in Milner’s name.
The first game of the tournament will take place at 11 a.m. Friday. Action will continue through the weekend, with the championship game taking place on Sunday.
In addition to watching the games in-person, the tournament will be livestreamed by North Pole Hoops.
Gay said their hope is to excite the Atlantic Canadian basketball community with something new.
“I believe basketball on the East Coast needs more profile,” says Gay. “It’s our goal to enhance and promote basketball here to the rest of Canada, and eventually to North America and around the world.”
You can find more details about the tournament and banquet by clicking here.
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