North River basketball coach recognized for his work with Jr. NBA

Ryan Gates has been handling Jr. NBA coaching duties for the past six years

A little while ago, Ryan Gates was having a bit of a week. As a dedicated volunteer in his North River community, it seemed like anything that was going to go wrong was bound to happen. “When you’re running organizations in the public eye, you always run into problems,” Gates told The Telegram.

When that happens, it’s natural to question why you do it. Chances are, in those moments, you find something that re-energizes you to keep going. For Gates, that energy came in the form of a letter from the National Basketball Association (NBA).

It told him that he had been recognized by the Jr. NBA program for the work he’s done to help develop players on and off the court. He was named the Jr. NBA International Coach Award winner for Canada in the Aspire category. It was just what the doctor ordered.

“For me to be on the receiving end of that, where maybe other people read my story and find it inspiring, it was a bit of a mind scrambler for me,” he said. A lot of work That story starts six years ago with the first Jr. NBA program, which Gates ran as a summer program on an outdoor court. It featured sessions for players as young as Grace 2 up to high school.

The number of kids who came out wasn’t eye-popping, but when you do something for the first time, it rarely is. “Mass numbers weren’t massive, but everyone came out and enjoyed themselves and followed the curriculum, and it was successful,” said Gates. He did the same the following summer, and the number of players grew a little again.

The next year, they grew again. That outdoor program soon turned into an after-school program at the local elementary school. “Basketball is a great everybody sport,” said Gates.

Now, it’s a full program that feeds into a program called the River Ratz, which Gates runs through his Aspire Recreation group. “I got some good coaches involved to help me,” he said. “Assistant coaches, volunteer parents, this kind of thing, and we’ve been running full bore ever since.”

They run in the winter and summer, now, although everything is indoors as temperatures have been consistently hot the last couple of years. A long-time coach Gates’ love of coaching didn’t happen overnight. Before he was running things on the court in North River, he was a volunteer student-coach for the junior girls’ team at Holy Trinity High in Heart’s Content.

He coached both basketball and volleyball in those days, on top of playing his own sports. Soon, life took him away from coaching, but in 2019, it steered him back to where he started with a t-ball program. “We started there, and we’ve been growing it ever since,” said Gates.

Inspiring others Being able to coach is just one part of Gates’ Jr. NBA program and his coaching philosophy in general. He’s seen players grow into athletes who can compete with the best at their age groups in the province, but that’s not really the end goal. Sure, that’s a part of it, but Gates is focused on making sure they’re just as good people.

That’s why he’s had his teams volunteer at soup kitchens and the like. Sometimes, it’s about helping others. “I don’t just lean into developing just good players.

I want to develop good people,” he said. “Sports in general will inherently develop good people, but if you put them in the right situation to succeed outside of the sport, it’ll make for better people and better athletes.” Building a community As Gates and the Jr. NBA have worked to grow the game in the CBN area, there’s been a bonus aspect that’s popped up: namely, a community that tends to increase as the program has done so.

It’s an inspiring part of the whole thing as parents and coaches have all become closer through the sport. “They support each other. They help each other with basketball-related things and not basketball-related things,” said Gates.

“So there’s so much good that comes out of this stuff.”