Year Two Begins for the K-W Titans
With the season now underway, Ball Construction is looking forward to a second year of exciting “hoops” as majority owner of the Kitchener-Waterloo Titans of the National Basketball League of Canada (NBLC)—despite a disappointing loss to the Windsor Express in the home opener on November 18th.
For Ball, the move into professional sports ownership was a natural fit. Not only does Ball sponsor many local amateur sports teams, it has overseen construction of numerous multi-purpose arenas and recreational facilities over the years including Brantford’s Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre, the Meridian Centre in St. Catherines and expansion and renovation of Kitchener’s Memorial Auditorium—home to the Titans.
KW Titans’ # 35, Derek Hall
As a stand-alone independent league, the NBLC is entering its seventh season as Canada’s longest standing professional basketball league.
Team Vice President, Cam Ball, is excited: “Season one was very successful. We set some goals for ourselves that we were able to achieve, including having a competitive team that made the playoffs in the first year, which was great.”
Out of five teams in the Central Division, the Titans finished third last year with an 18-22 record before being dispatched by Windsor in the first round of the playoffs.
Titans’ coach, Serge Langis, is back this season with a new one-year deal. Langis has also taken over as General Manager of Basketball Operations.
Without a single player among the league’s top point getters, scoring was clearly an issue in the Titan’s inaugural year. Langis hopes to address this issue by boosting the roster’s offence without sacrificing the team’s defensive resilience.
Ball Construction and local entrepreneur and minority owner, Leon Martin, continue to run the team’s day-to-day operations and sponsorship programmes. Ball has arranged for another local firm, Isabel Avery & Company, to spearhead a marketing strategy. Together, all are working diligently to drum up as much awareness of the Titans as possible.
The 10-team NBLC is devoted to raising the sport’s profile in Canadian communities by providing an exciting and entertaining on-court product. With this in mind, the league’s Board of Governors announced in June that this season each team must carry a minimum of five Canadians at all times.
For the Titan franchise, it’s all about goal setting and Ball is happy to have helped achieve the objectives set in the first season and aims to keep building on this success.
The Titans’ next home game is at the Kitchener-Waterloo Auditorium on Tuesday, November 28th against the Halifax Hurricanes.
For ticket information, go to: www.kwtitans.com.
