Saint Mary's basketball guard making the most of opportunity

Star guard is trying to get tryout for Canadian National Team

Saint Mary’s Huskies point guard Joey Haywood is determined to make the most of his second chance to make Canada’s Olympic team. Photo: Sarah Plowman

Joey Haywood, Saint Mary's University men's basketball point guard, is working to make the most of his second chance.

In July 2008 Canada's Olympic coach, Leo Rautlins, bought Haywood a ticket to fly from Los Angeles, where he was playing streetball, to Toronto to try out for Canada's national team.

He didn't go.

Instead, the 26-year-old competed in a Ball-4-Real streetball tournament - a five-on-five format of basketball where fancy tricks such as alley oops, dunks and special ball handling are applauded - for a chance to win $100,000.

"I screwed it up," Haywood says. Every time he watched the Olympic team play, "I think in the back of my head, I could've been there."

Haywood didn't end up with the $100,000. Neither did the winner, because Ball-4-Real went bankrupt.

A few weeks later, he got a second chance.

He was playing the annual Black Basketball Tournament in Halifax when the Saint Mary's Huskies men's basketball coach, Ross Quackenbush, saw him and decided he wanted him on his team.

"It was dumb luck," Quackenbush says of how he recruited Haywood. "It was like something transcended from heaven and dropped him in my lap."

Quackenbush says most coaches think players who can do fancy tricks are "the Antichrist." But with Haywood, it‘s the opposite, he says. Haywood is incredibly eager, listens and is easy to coach.

Huskies' captain Mark McGlaughlin says Haywood is the quickest and hardest-working guy on the team. "At practice, he's always the first one to show up and the last one to leave."

Last season Atlantic University Sport picked the rookie to the first all-star team. He was the leading scorer in the league with an average of 21.4 points per game.

"Everything happens for a reason," says Haywood, who dropped out of Langara College in 2002 and spent six years travelling North America and Japan playing street ball.

"I believe God gives us a second chance."

Haywood seized that chance and dedicated himself to education as well as basketball.

Haywood isolates himself in his dorm room for at least four hours every day, studying psychology and biology. He says he writes his notes down four, sometimes five times, to remember it.

He wants a career and says basketball won't always be an option.

But while he's at Saint Mary's, he's training for bigger things.

"I think one reason why I work so hard is because I screwed up, " says Haywood, "I made a mistake and I want to get it again. I want to play on the Canadian National Team."

Haywood can only get that chance if his performance at Saint Mary's earns him enough attention to be invited to tryout.

If he doesn't make the national team, he wants to be a social worker.

"I want to tell kids, if you have a big opportunity take it. Don't be like me. I could be playing pro somewhere."

Haywood says he's happy to be a Huskie. He's grateful for the opportunity Quackenbush gave him and wants to make the most of his time at Saint Mary‘s.

"I'm happy here. And if that never happened, I wouldn't be here," Haywood says.

"It's my second chance."

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