Track Coach Harbours Bigtime Hoop Dreams

Daniel St-Hilaire is the track and field coach who discovered Justin “Jus Fly” Darlington on the Internet and hopes to transform the Ajax resident into an Olympic high jump medallist (as featured on the front of the Star today and also below in the blog), but his hoop dreams don’t end there.

St-Hilaire’s theory is that basketball has better and more dynamic athletes than track and field and there are plenty of gems out there to be mined.

He points to the basketball backgrounds of former Canadian sprint kings Donovan Bailey and Bruny Surin – the latter recruited by St-Hilaire – as well as Brampton high jumper Mark Boswell, a two-time world championship medallist.

“I am sure there are a lot of great athletes who never got to try track,” said St-Hilaire.

St-Hilaire’s vision is to set up camps for kids that combine basketball and track and field, or even more specifically, dunking and track and field.

The veteran coach said they would try to attract kids from 12 to 20 years old to such a camp in Montreal this fall and teach dunking to them on Tuesday and track and field on Thursday. The hoops would be set at varying heights depending on their age and ability.

St-Hilaire said Darlington would be a coach and obviously the main attraction at such a camp.

It’s easy to understand why when you watch this:

Comments

[Ivan]

I believe Justin was the same person who performed at a slam dunk contest (for a trip to next year's All-Star game) during halftime at a Raptors game a few weeks back. He did the last dunk on the video at Rogers Centre and the crowd went nuts including myself. Best dunk I've seen so far.

[Ivan]

Whoops! I meant ACC not Rogers Centre.