Another season, another successful Youth Day! It is always such a joy watching the players in our Youth Programs as they improve exponentially over the course of each and every season. The day, therefore, never fails to act as the perfect celebration of the achievements of our players, our coaches, and our organization. Once again the day was able to perfectly balance the intersections of competition, community building, and having fun! 

Across all divisions and locations, we were running a raffle with the Grand Prize of a Kyle Lowry jersey and the winner of this amazing gift, donated by Canadian Tire, was… Jamari, from our Boys Competitive Division!!! Huge congrats to Jamari as well as to all of the other ticket holders in the raffle because half of the proceeds from the contest were donated to Canadian Tire’s Jumpstart charity. So while only one person won the jersey hopefully many children with fewer resources will be able to benefit from the donations in their own pursuit of sport.

While Youth Day was mainly focused on the community we were celebrating within our own organization, it is imperative to note that we were also aiming to increase engagement in our larger community of Toronto. In partnering with ParticipACTION, BWT ran multiple 10-minute workouts to contribute to the Community Better Challenge, which aims to promote physical activity in neighbourhoods and cities across Canada. By downloading the app you can record your own activity and work towards getting Toronto the title of the most active community in Canada.

There were some incredible buzzer-beating shots and even games won by a single foul shot! But in the end, it was just another point of reflection for how far our organization has come in developing these leagues and the programs with which to achieve such results. The CBC even came by to interview our Girls Competitive players to ask them about the Raptors making the finals and what it means to them, which you can read more about here.

We want to deeply thank our sponsors for supporting this day, our leagues, as well as youth sports as a whole. Thank you to the players who gave it their all while maintaining a high level of sportsmanship, and thank you to all the friends and family who came out to support them!