When Nick Kellof was sinking layups and blocking shots for Canada on the basketball court 10 years ago at the Special Olympics World Summer Games in Los Angeles, his son Sam was back home in North Vancouver cheering on his dad while the team advanced to the medal round.
They came up a few points shy in the bronze medal match but it didn’t matter to Sam. He was just glad his hero in the red and while Canadian jersey was there to show off his moves, playing his favourite sport at the highest level.
He never dreamed one day they would be teammates. Kind of like LeBron James suiting up for the Los Angeles Lakers with his son Bronny, but without the big salaries.
Nick and Sam are doing it for the love of the game.
They’re playing side-by-side for the North Shore Wildcats this week in Prince George - the only father-son combination on the list of 900 athletes competing at the Special Olympics BC Summer Games. They’ve been on the same team for two years now, with Nick at point guard and Sam playing the wing as a shooting guard.
“It’s amazing, I love playing with Sam,” said Nick, 45, who introduced him to basketball about the same time he learned how to walk.
“I just like the physicality of basketball. I used to watch the Vancouver Grizzlies when we had them.”
Soccer is Sam’s Number 1 sport. He plays competitive soccer for a Division 2 youth team in North Vancouver and his dream job is to someday play pro. But first things first, he’s got basketball on his mind.
“I honestly just like playing with my dad,” Sam said. “It’s a new experience and I love it. It’s amazing, I’ve always wanted to play with him in a sport and I finally get to.”
The Wildcats went winless in the seeding round, a series of 12-minute games Friday at Duchess Park Secondary School to determine which pool they’ll compete in the rest of the way in the eight -team tournament. The Rebels started with 12-10 loss to Prince George (Cariboo-North East Region 8), then lost 26-14 to Richmond , followed by an 8-7 defeat handed out by the Langley Rebels.
Their 0-3 start dropped North Shore to the B Pool but they’ll still have a shot at a podium finish with medals going to the top three in each pool.
Nick was in Prince George in July 2001 when the city first hosted the Special Olympics BC Summer Games. He played soccer for Region 5 that year and they won the bronze medal in a nailbiter.
“It went to penalties to decide it and the ‘keepers had to take (penalty kicks) because it went on so long and we won,” said Nick.
Nick likes to mingle with the athletes from other sports and loves telling old dad jokes to try to get a cheap laugh. Here’s an example… “If I’m wearing a pair of shorts with the Number 2 on it, am I too short?”
“Sam is a perfectionist at eye-rolling.”
A crowd of about 2,500 attended the opening ceremony Thursday night at CN Centre. It was nothing like 2015 when Nick was among 62,338 people who attended the World Summer Games opening ceremony in 2015 at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, but the PG opening was still a good time. Nick was surprised to see Premier David Eby there.
“It’s always been an MLA or something and it was cool the premier came,” said Nick. “I heard from the sport minister, Spencer Chandra Herbert, that the premier wasn’t good at basketball (despite his six-foot-seven height), well I’ll train him. He seems like a really nice guy.”
Nick especially liked what Mayor Simon Yu’s said to the crowd at the opening.
“Winning is a state of mind, he said, so even if we don’t, it’s still a state of mind, just do your best,” said Nick. “He gave the best speech last night.”
Sam says he’s in it to win it, but if they don’t make the medal podium it’s not the end of the world.
“I just want to have fun with my dad,” he said.
The Region 5 athletes got back from the ceremony to their billet school at around 10:30 p.m. but were forced to evacuate when the fire alarm was set off in a false alarm around 11 p.m., and they final got to sleep about a half-hour later.
Nick works as a fare enforcement officer for Translink, the public transportation company that serves the Lower Mainland. He admits he’s slowing down with age but he still enjoys playing the game. He and Sam do a lot of shooting practice, not so much running. Sam gets his fill of that playing soccer with mainstream athletes.
Nick first got involved in Special Olympics in 1997, when he was 17, when a friend asked him to join, and now he’s spawned a second generation.
“It’s super cool for me, because I’ve been coaching Nick for 18 years and I got to watch Sam literally from diapers and in a stroller watching dad to, all of a sudden on the court, playing together,” said Wildcats head coach Zak Klein.
“I remember the first time we had shift and ran them together and Nick made a long pass from our side of the court to Sam on a break and he stopped and hit his shot. It was just goosebumps, absolutely chilling. He sunk it, it was beautiful. It was a top-five moment in my life.
“Sam was 11, competing against men three times older than him, and now he holds his own, he’s had a bit of a growth spurt.”
Klein says the two of them set a fine example for the rest of the team on how to conduct themselves as athletes and as people, and he’s learned from that.
“Nick’s a phenomenal father, I recently became a dad and I just look up to him for how he has raised Sam and the hard work he’s put in,” said Klein. “It’s just a full-circle moment where maybe I’m teaching Nick about basketball but he’s teaching me about fatherhood and how to be a man. He’s just a great guy and one of my best friends.”
The Prince George-based Region 8 (Cariboo-North East) team also defeated Surrey 27-24 and got off to 2-0 start to qualify for the A pool. That team includes Teagan Raines, Matteas Cordeiro, Josuha Mehrassa, Chase Caron, Audrey Nelson and Adam Spokes, all of Prince George; and Martin Scriver and Scott Jonasson of Quesnel.
