I noted an article in the March 16 Vancouver Province recognizing a former star Prince George Polar Basketball player - Ron Thorsen. He lead the Polars to unsurpassed heights in the late 1960s. He then lead the UBC Thunderbird basketball team to two national championships in the early 1970s. The articles brought fond memories of watching and cheering for a local hero. I hope the PG Citizen was able to carry the stories too. Putting PG on the map in a new way.
Brian LaPointe
Williams Lake
(Editor's Note: Thanks for the heads up, Brian. An edited version of the Province story is reprinted below, along with a story and photo from the Citizen's archives on Thorsen's accomplishments. Thorsen is a member of the PGSS Athletics Wall of Fame.)
Local basketball legend honoured in CIS final
Mike BEAMISH, Vancouver Province
His skill lay in the fact that he was not just a scorer but a playmaker. Ron Thorsen could survey a court with 180-degree peripheral vision, spot an unguarded teammate and whip a pass that turned him into a sudden scoring threat.
Deception and legerdemain made him the spiritual forebear of Steve Nash. Thorsen remains the only UBC player to have been drafted by the NBA (1973), a year after the California-born point guard from Prince George led the T-Birds to their second Canadian university men's basketball title in three years.
Those 1970 and 1972 teams, the last in a line of national basketball champions from the Point Grey campus, were recognized during halftime of the recent game between UBC and the No. 1-ranked Ryerson Rams on opening day of the CIS Final 8.
Sadly, Thorsen and Peter Mullins, the Australian-born UBC coaching legend are both deceased, making the celebration a bittersweet one.
"I feel so fortunate that I got the close-up exposure to Ron that I did," says John Mills, a player with the '70 and '72 teams and current co-chair of the board of directors of Basketball Canada. "If great players are measured by making people around them better, that certainly was the case with Ron. If you got open, he got you the ball. He was like Steve Nash that way. He was just as happy to have an assist as a basket. Maybe happier."
Thorsen had a 43-point performance in the semifinals and Mills scored 27 in an 87-80 win over Atlantic champion Acadia in the championship game of the 1972 tournament, played at UBC's War Memorial Gym under a four-team format.
