By Nathan Kanter

NBCHS’s Dutton to represent province at Canada Summer Games

May 23, 2017 | 5:00 PM

Damon Dutton is an integral part of his high school’s football and basketball teams.

But this summer, it’s all about the hard court for the North Battleford Comprehensive High School multi-sport athlete, as the 17-year-old will be playing for Saskatchewan’s male basketball team at the Canada Summer Games in Winnipeg.

“I’m just excited. I think it’s just going to be awesome,” Dutton said over the phone on Tuesday afternoon. “I’ve been waiting a long time to see if I could [make this team] and when I did, I was just in the moment excited and like ‘here we are.’ “

The process for making the team goes back to September. Back at the beginning of the school year, it was informal camps. Following that, there were three seperate rounds of actual try-outs over the next several months, before the team was finally chosen in April.

But NBCHS Vikings senior basketball head coach Jamie Sommerfeld said the process for Dutton to get noticed goes back even before this past September.

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“For kids who are in the rural setting, it’s very difficult for them to…crack open the Saskatoon/Regina net to get yourself in there and get your foot in the door, so it takes a lot of time…to be seen,” Sommerfeld said. “They took the same coaching staff from the provincial team last year…so it’s really hard because if you didn’t get in with that…you had to show that growth within the year that they are expecting for you to make it this year.”

Dutton did exactly that – impressing the coaches with his growth and breaking in despite being not from a large urban centre.

In fact, he is one of just three players selected not from Regina or Saskatoon, which is where all the coaching staff is from. Seven of the 12 players are from Regina (one attends Notre Dame College) and two are from Saskatoon. Matthew Mandziuk, from Yorkton, and Jett Kowalchuk, from Moose Jaw, are the only players other than Dutton not from Regina or Saskatoon.

The head coach of the team is Tanner Brightman, who coaches at Balour Collegiate High School in Regina. He has three assistants: Will Redl from Campbell Collegiate High School in Regina, Trevor Mirtle and Dave Earl, both from Walter Murray High School in Saskatoon.

Sommerfeld believes a huge selling point for Dutton’s game is his ability to play on both sides of the ball.

“What kind of sets him apart from a lot of people who are offensive minded is he’s also a top defender,” Sommerfeld said. “He plays with a lot of that grit that is really hard to coach and [he has] that toughness that a lot of coaches speak to. So when you add that all together, he’s a very well rounded player.”

Dutton said that was one of his goals in try-outs.

“I wanted to show them I could do basically everything. I wasn’t just one-dimensional,” Dutton said. “I could play both sides of the ball pretty well and they could use me and I wasn’t scared to go up against guys better than me.”

Over the past few weeks, the team has been gearing up with practices and even a tournament, as they played against retired U Sports players at the University of Regina during the weekend of May 13/14.

“It was tough,” Dutton said of that experience. “They were all bigger than us and had more experience and they played really well together. They just understood the game a bit more. As the weekend went on, we got better and our chemistry got better.” 

Gearing up for the CSG with more than just practices is vital, because nothing compares to the situations you face during an actual game.

And facing teams that were bigger than they are was also probably not a coincidence.

“Compared to some of the other teams, we’re going to be lacking some size. That’s typical for Saskatchewan though,” Dutton said. “We’re very unselifsh and we’re a shooting team. Everybody lays it on the line and nobody takes a play off. We all fight for each other.”

Sommerfeld agreed that Saskatchewan often lacks size but figures they should be able to compete for a medal.

“It’ll be interesting because typically we play a lot of small-ball here as opposed to some of the size you’re going to face in Ontario and Quebec,” Sommerfeld said. “But I do expect that they should be running anywhere from a medal to kind of that five position, going in. They’ve had a good experience of playing at the national level the past couple years with this age group so we expect that there should be some really close games.”

Dutton is confident the coaching staff will make the necessary adjustments when playing against bigger teams like Ontario and Quebec.

“The coaches always put us in good spots to be successful in these games,” he said. “They do a lot of planning and they set up our game plan according to what the other team does well and they always do a very good job of that.”

Saskatchewan gets to avoid Ontario and Quebec in the round robin, as they are in a pool with Alberta, New Brunswick, and Yukon. 

Tournament play begins on July 29 and goes until Friday August 4.

“We’re very proud of him at the school for the accomplishment he has made of just getting there,” Sommerfeld added. “[He’s] not just respresenting our province, but it’s even smaller. He’s one of very few out of the Battlefords to go to the Canada Summer Games. I can count probably on one hand the amount of kids in the northwest that we’re sending so he really is going to do us proud.”

nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca

@NathanKanter11