For a late-blooming, walk-on from small-town Ontario, Jarred Reid's five-year career with the Tigers has turned out better than he could have ever imagined.
By: Monty Mosher
If you don't know anything about Jarred Reid it's OK. Most casual basketball fans would be on that list.
When supporters of the Dalhousie Tigers think of their two-time champion men's basketball team, it would be Kashrell Lawrence, Ritchie Kanza Mata and Sven Stammberger top of mind.
It's always been that way for Reid, an unassuming character out of Aurora, Ont. Recruiters came to his high school looking for hockey talent, not varsity basketball players.
But if the Tigers are winning, and they've done plenty of that over the last few years, you can bet Reid, a 23-year-old management student, has his hands all over it. He's hitting a shot, driving the lane, getting a steal or pulling down a rebound and starting the break.
The six-foot-two guard needs 80 points for 1,000 in a five-year career that might never have happened at all. And he'll finish on the court at Scotiabank Centre in March with the Tigers guaranteed a place in the draw as the host entry.
"I'm just all about the game," Reid said this week as the 10-4 Tigers prepared for a weekend homestand against Memorial.
"The most important thing to me is just making sure we win games. Whether that means being the silent leader or the quiet guy in the background, that's fine with me. It's all about team first. We've got one goal."
The Tigers can earn a place in the AUS tournament March 3-5 at Scotiabank Centre with two wins this weekend.
Dalhousie plays with a passion and intensity that comes from the top. Head coach Rick Plato is as expressive as they come on the sideline. He can tear a player apart and put him back together all with a single glance.
The personalities of the players are allowed to shine through, and they do.
"Everyone has their own mentality of how they play the game," Reid said. "I'm not as loud and exuberant as Kash, but when I have my time I enjoy it was much as anybody on the team."
Plato knows who Reid is, describing him as the kind of student and athlete every coach hopes to have on his team.
"First and foremost, he is a great person," said Plato. "He is involved in the student community, is an academic all-Canadian and he is a completely unselfish player who always puts the team first.
"He is someone that I am extremely proud of and someone in which the entire Dalhousie community can be proud. Although he has had to live in the shadows of his more award-decorated teammates -- Ritchie Kanza Mata and Kashrell Lawrence -- he has been absolutely integral to the success we have enjoyed over the past few years."
Reid laughs when asked how he was recruited to Dalhousie. He wasn't. He's a walk-on and proud of it.
A handful of teams took a look at him, but nobody was offering him a gold-plated scholarship to join their team.
Most of the coaches beat the bushes in Brampton, Scarborough and Mississauga. Aurora was a barely on the trail.
On top of all that, Reid came to basketball fairly late. He didn't play competitive basketball until Grade 10 and had some catching up to do.
John Campbell, the coach of the Tigers at the time, had seen Reid play a few times and wasn't enraptured.
"I told him I was interested in coming to Dal," Reid said. "He said if I showed up and it went well we'd see."
It was the 2012-13 season.
"I came out to Dalhousie early in August. I just showed up and I was prepared to play. Within the first couple of weeks I was starting. We had a couple of injuries, but I kind of earned my spot from there and kept working my up the totem pole and stringing games together.
"I took a chance and tried to make something happen and it turned out pretty well."
He wasn't flying blind in Halifax. He knew the city a bit after coming east to visit some friends a year earlier.
"I just fell in love with the university and the campus and the different programs offered by the school. It was just the feel and the atmosphere of it all. From there I made a decision that whether he (Campbell) wanted me or not, I was coming. I just made sure I was ready when I got here."
After Reid's first season, Campbell took a job at the University of Toronto and Plato, after 25 years at Mount Saint Vincent, took the reins of an AUS team.
Campbell was a summer breeze. Plato can be a full-force gale.
"Any time you've got a different coach coming, it's a learning experience. You have to meet someone new, you have to learn their style and they have to learn about you. It's a lot of trying to understand and see how people see the game. It was difficult for everyone and we struggled for a little bit just because there was a lack of knowledge."
The Tigers missed the playoffs at 6-14 in his first year, but they were only minus 42 in point differential. They were already competitive.
They were 10-10 the next year, but beat Cape Breton, UNB and Saint Mary's for the conference banner. They were 13-7, defeating Saint Mary's and UPEI to advance to the Final 8.
The core group at Dalhousie has grown together and many, including Reid, will leave together.
Reid says the team is family.
"It's guys growing up and becoming men together," he said. "We all kind of came in at the same time. You learn more about each other, learn more about the game. We saw the success that Cape Breton and Acadia and Saint Mary's had when we came in the league and we wanted that. It was a matter of how we were going to get it.
"There were calls over the summer just talking and trying to come together because we knew we were the guys who were going to be here. It's weird looking back now on the success we've had. It's definitely just a lot of inches forward to get to where we are. We've been pretty successful, but we want to do something pretty great this season."
For a late-blooming, walk-on from small-town Ontario, it's better than he dreamt.
"It's been like a story book," he said. "Coming in I'd never would have thought I'd have two championships and in my last year already have a chance at nationals and be a solid contender for another AUS championship. There's a good way for the story to end and we're just trying to write that last page."