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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Friday, December 11, 2015 | 34 Kevin Nagel Sports Editor knagel@burlingtonpost.com Sports "Connected to your Community" David Idele of the Holy Trinity Titans tries to get past a Hayden Huskies defender Wednesday at Trinity. The Titans improved to 5-0 on the Halton senior boys' basketball Tier 1 season with a 72-39 victory. | photo by Riziero Vertolli -- Oakville Beaver -- @Halton_Photog Inexperienced Titans quickly excelling at senior level by Herb Garbutt Oakville Beaver Staff Ezeoha Santiago turned the corner and drove hard toward the basket. With an open lane, he elevated early, lifted the ball above his head and jammed it through the hoop with one hand. The second-quarter dunk in a 72-39 win over the Hayden Huskies looked like the kind of play you would expect from a veteran player. And though Santiago is in Grade 12, he's much like many of his Holy Trinity teammates. "We're a young team," says Titans coach Andrew Saulez, "not in age, but in experience." The Titans have just one starter, Chris Hankins, back from the team that lost to the eventual Halton senior Tier 1 boys' basketball champions, Bishop Reding, in last year's semifinal. But they do have a group hungry to succeed after winning the Halton junior title two years ago. Santiago is among the players inheriting a larger role on this year's team. But it's an unlikely role given his basketball history. The 6-foot-4 guard moved to Canada from Trinidad a couple of months before starting high school. His mom brought him into Holy Trinity in the summer to find out a little bit about the school he would be attending in the fall and it just so happened that it was the final day of the youth basketball camp the school holds each year. "He was a little shy and nervous," Saulez said. "We told his mom, `He's welcome to stay and meet some kids.'" Santiago hadn't played basketball before but several coaches knew his uncle, Ron, who was once a standout at Loyola. And Santiago soon showed he had inherited some of that DNA. Though he didn't play much in his Grade 9 season, he earned a starting role on the junior team in Grade 10. In that year's Halton final, he scored 15 points in a 64-50 Trinity win over Assumption. He went back to coming off the bench in his first year of senior but this year is intent on seizing the opportunity to start. "No matter how many minutes you play, you have to give it your all," Santiago said. "Whether it's one or 22, it's what you do with it." That outlook has helped him close the gap on players who started playing at a much younger age. He played two years of rep with the Oakville Venom before joining Hamilton's U Play Canada this season. "He's pretty motivated," Saulez said. "Experiencewise he may not have played as many games, but as far as practice, he's in here most mornings in the offseason and he's gained some skills." Those were on display against Hayden with a pair of dunks as well as a pair of threes among his 13 points. The Titans as a whole are equally as diverse. Five players scored in double figures against Hayden -- Santiago, Cullen Welsford (15), Andreas Skenderija (12), Tariq Elsa (11) and Hankins (10). They have the size to battle under the hoop with Elsa (6-foot-8), Skenderija (6-foot-6), Hankins (6-foot-5) and Santiago (6-foot-4), but also have a wide range of weapons see HT on p.35 hen we in the newsroom would receive our annual pension statement, a running joke would be what our projected retirement date was. Mine was Sept. 30, 2043. By then, I figured we'd be teleporting to the various events we'd cover, or at least be taking a hovercar. It turns out my final day as sports editor of the Oakville Beaver is coming a lot sooner than that. This edition is the last of the 2,000 or so newspapers I've helped produce for Metroland's Halton Division, though Sports Editor this is hardly a Oakville Beaver retirement. It's also not a case of being forced out the door. It's simply a time to pursue other interests. And it's not without mixed emotions. I owe a lot to this newspaper, to sister publications The Burlington Post and Milton Canadian Champion, and to the various editors, managers and reporters I've worked under and with during the past 12-plus years. I had covered sports for a newspaper before, but this job -- first as a Halton regional sports reporter, then as the sports editor of the Beaver -- was my first real breakthrough into the print journalism industry. It brought an aspiring young vagabond (previous stops included Taber, Alta., and Prescott, Ont., among others) to Halton Region, and I've never wanted to leave. For the past dozen years, Oakville and Burlington are where I've lived, joined sports teams, volunteered with minor hockey and baseball organizations, and made many friends. Most importantly, they're where I met my wife, Jen, and where my two young children, Connor and Kennedy, were born. Oakville and Burlington will always be home. This job has also provided me with the opportunity to meet so many fascinating people and document their accomplishments in sports. A few months after I started in 2003, I was filling in for vacationing Beaver sports editor Norm Nelson when a father and his kayaking son wandered into our Speers Road office looking for coverage. Fortunately, I was somehow smart enough back then to provide them with some. W Goodbye, and thanks A year later, Adam van Koeverden shocked many by winning Olympic gold and bronze in Athens, and was later the recipient of the Lou Marsh Award as Canada's top athlete. To some, Adam can seem like a difficult person to interview. If he doesn't agree with the premise of a question, he won't just nod politely and give a cookie-cutter answer. He'll correct you, much as he did one time when I suggested he may have `sacrificed' certain elements of his life to become an Olympic champion. But I appreciated how Adam challenges you. He expects the best of himself, so why wouldn't he expect you to make every effort to be better as well? Mike Vanderjagt was another Oakville athlete who could rub people the wrong way, sometimes coming off as arrogant. To me, he was extremely confident in his abilities (as someone who ranks fifth all-time in the NFL in field-goal percentage should be), and I'll always remember how he gave a fledgling reporter a thoughtful, lengthy interview in the Colts locker room after a victory in Buffalo. Not all professional athletes are that accommodating following a game. And I remember groggily waking up the morning of Aug. 9, 2012 (Connor was less than four months old, so it hadn't been the best night's sleep), turning on the TV and realizing I had a whirlwind day ahead of me. Diana Matheson had just scored in injury time to earn Olympic bronze for the Canadian women's soccer team, and I had to chase down her former coaches, teammates and even employers to get their perspective on Oakville's newest sporting hero. The following day, I was able to reach Kara Lang by phone from England and got the former national team veteran's candid and emotional reaction to it all. Other memorable interviews: Ron MacLean (as classy as he appears on TV), Don Cherry (as funny as he appears on TV), former Raptors play-by-play man Chuck Swirsky, Blue Jays beat reporter Scott MacArthur, auto racer James Hinchcliffe, and every time I talked to local National Lacrosse Leaguers Paul and Dan see Impressed on p.35 Jon Kuiperij