Raucous crowd wills Sea Bears to CEBL championship title

In sport one often hears of a home crowd giving so much support, motivation and inspiration to the home team that the team accomplishes something it might not have been able to do without such a boisterous crowd.

In basketball parlance that kind of a crowd is called “the sixth man on the court.” The crowd’s impact on the game was palpable.

That was certainly the case last Saturday when a record-setting crowd of 12,519 energetic fans willed their beloved Sea Bears to the club’s first ever CEBL championship title.

I’m embarrassed to admit I’m late to the Sea Bears band wagon. Having heard that the team’s home games have a tremendous atmosphere, are a great time for fans and that the quality of the basketball is superb, my first game happened to be a championship game.

It will not be my last game. That’s for certain. I’m hooked on the Sea Bears experience.

Sea Bears owner David Asper deserves all kinds of credit for building such a fun sporting experience, a first-class organization and now, a championship team.

Local basketball fans have responded with the kind of love and support teams can only dream of.

It was as if the script for the final game was written in Hollywood. Local guy and MBCI alumnus (Simon Hildebrandt) scores championship-winning bucket in front of family and friends to seal the CEBL title.

The entire fan-friendly Sea Bears experience is what sports should be — fun, exciting, affordable, entertaining and something in which fans are wholeheartedly invested.

The Sea Bears got off to a horrible start. Nothing seemed to work and literally none of their shots were dropping for the first few minutes. It felt like this glorious opportunity to win the league championship on home court was not going to happen.

But the hometown crowd never gave up. They never stopped supporting their Sea Bears and eventually they took control of the game and ultimately won the organization’s first championship in only their fourth year of existence.

The 98-84 victory for the Sea Bears over the Brampton Honey Badgers is a remarkable story for a team that has captured the hearts of basketball fans in Manitoba.

The Canadian Elite Basketball League consists of 10 teams, evenly split with a western conference that includes the Sea Bears, the Vancouver Bandits, Calgary Surge, Edmonton Stingers and the Saskatoon Mamba.

The eastern conference teams are the Brampton Honey Badgers, Montréal Alliance, Niagara River Lions, Ottawa Blackjacks and the Scarborough Shooting Stars.

When the championship game ended and confetti guns immediately fired teal-coloured confetti into the air, the jubilation and pure joy of the Sea Bears players and their adoring fans was something to behold.

To say it was a beautiful moment would be a disservice to the overflowing emotions swirling throughout the building.

Security eventually let fans onto the court and hundreds of fans were scooping up the confetti off the floor to take home as a souvenir of their beloved Sea Bears impressive championship victory.

Thanks to the atmosphere that Asper and company have created and the calibre of the players on the team, the Sea Bears own virtually every attendance record in league history. It’s easy to see why. Even before capturing the league title, the Sea Bears have captured lightning in a bottle.

Big time congratulations to David Asper and his entire organization, and to the players on the court who harnessed the energy and intensity of the crowd to a league title.