Aiming for the top

PHOTO COURTESY GUS GYMNOPOULOS

Vaughan’s Andrew Wiggins takes his talents Stateside

Vaughan Secondary School’s boys basketball team is looking for a repeat after winning the AAAA OFSAA championship last season.

This time though, they won’t have the help of their top-scoring baller, 16-year-old Andrew Wiggins.

The Vaughan native is ranked as the top prospect in the 2014 high school class, according to Coast 2 Coast recruiting. He transferred to Huntington Prep, a self-described “basketball academy” in West Virginia, this summer after earning OFSAA gold with coach Gus Gymnopoulos and the Voyageurs in March. Wiggins was the high scorer in the championship game despite being in ninth grade.

“It’s obvious that losing a player like him is never good,” Gymnopoulos said. “I don’t know what it’s going to be like until we start playing games, what his impact on the court actually was.”

Standing six-foot-seven with a 40-inch vertical leap, Wiggins has pro pedigree. Both of his parents were professional athletes and he is fourth eldest of six children. His father, Mitchell Wiggins, played professional basketball in the NBA and Europe and his mother, Marita Payne, was a track star who won two silver medals for Canada at the 1984 Olympics.

“Andrew’s almost a product of a perfect environment for an athlete,” Gymnopoulos said. “If you combine the genetics plus the upbringing with two older brothers who play basketball, I mean, he just was able to harness all of that information and as his body started catching up with him people started taking notice.”

One of the many people who noticed Wiggins’ potential was Rob Fulford, head coach of Huntington Prep.

“He’s a star, there’s no question about it,” Fulford said. “He’s a Lebron, Kobe-level talent.”

Although basketball fans in Canada still haven’t heard of the Vaughan prodigy, Wiggins was still in middle school when he achieved celebrity-status south of the border. Despite the popularity both of Wiggins’ coaches said he doesn’t seek the limelight and has even stopped speaking to the press due to interview fatigue.

“He has so much hype and publicity that surrounds him and it doesn’t phase him,” Fulford said. “He’s just a humble kid like any other 16-year-old kid would be. He can’t wait to get to home to get to the Xbox and goof around and be a silly kid.”

Vaughan’s coach echoed those statements, saying the media attention may actually be helping him.

“As a person, Andrew’s always been a very, very humble kid,” Gymnopoulos said. “I think the scrutiny has made him want to get better and he doesn’t want to let that status go down.”

Gymnopoulos is hoping the Voyageurs’ champion status doesn’t go down this season without Wiggins in the lineup.

“We want to win OFSAA, we want to repeat as champions but I think our goal is to get better with every single game and see how far that takes us,” Gymnopoulos said. “That’s kind of always the goal that I set.”

Henry Tan will be returning to run the point alongside the shooting of Roshane Roberts, the versatility of Sy Samuels and scorer Troy Knight-Reid.

Gymnopoulos said Wiggins’ absence is pushing his charges to get back-to-back titles.

“You never know what’s going to happen so that’s the exciting part of this season,” Gymnopoulos said. “Obviously anytime we lose people are going to say ‘well, it was because of Andrew Wiggins,’ so that in itself is motivating our guys like crazy.”