The 4A B.C. Boy’s Basketball season is six weeks in and already the Kelowna Owls are the clear favourite to win a provincial championship come March. Not only that, the squad from the Okanagan, led by head coach Harry Parmar, is being compared to two of the best high school teams of all time: the 1988 Richmond Colts and the Steve Nash-led 1992 Saint Michaels University Blue Devils.
That’s high praise for the #1 ranked Owls, but well deserved. Kelowna has most of its team back from last year’s squad, who lost in the provincial semi-finals to the eventual champs, Yale. This season, the Owls have yet to lose to a school from British Columbia and are dominating against some of the province’s top teams. KSS has played seven games against ranked teams in The Provinces Big 10 rankings, where the margin of victory in those games is an incredible 28.4 points.
“It is (going well)” states Kelowna Head Coach Harry Parmar, “and we want to keep it that way. I mean you are always going to have stinker games where you don’t play your best but when they’re on, and all on the same page, they are pretty tough to beat. Our goal is to play the best we can and if we do that the chips will fall where they may and we will be ok with that.”
When you watch Parmar’s Owls before their games it is clear what the team is all about; it is written on their warm up shirts. “WE” in bold letters – shirts that Coach Parmar made himself. Kelowna plays some of the most fast paced team basketball that the province has ever seen. Each game it’s not one guy, it’s eight or nine guys getting it done.
It could be said that the Owls toughest opponent this year has been the travel. Most weekends the team is taking the five-hour drive from Kelowna to the Lower Mainland for games. It is a requirement for the team, but Coach Parmar says his team doesn’t mind it.
“They like staying in hotels, and they get along with each other and we will do a few things here and there. When the B.C.’s roll around we are going to have to be in hotel rooms, so if we get used to that earlier it will make life easier for us.”
The Owls will not have to worry about travel until the provincials with only Okanagan regular season games left. They will also be hosting the Western Canada Tournament on Feb 4-6.
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