Sure, the event is almost exclusively local entries in year one, but Lasalle Lancers' senior boys basketball coach Joel Rehel felt that this was a project that simply could no longer wait.

This coming weekend, gymnasiums at Lasalle, Macdonald-Cartier and Lo-Ellen will play host to the inaugural Mitch Lalonde Memorial Basketball Tournament. Of the sixteen teams entered - eight in junior and eight in senior - all but one are SDSSAA squads, with only Appleby College from Oakville making the trek north.

Such is the reach of Covid-19. Still, Rehel perseveres.

"Mitch coached me for four years, coached for almost 40 years in all, touched so many lives as a coach," said Rehel. "Hosting a tournament in his name is something I've wanted to do for a long-time."

Safe to say the thought predated the untimely passing of the well-respected member of the Sudbury Sports Hall of Fame in 2018. True, there will be no fans on hand, and coaches and players not on the court must be wearing their masks - but Rehel, for one, had no second thoughts about proceeding with the tribute.

"With nobody running anything, I jumped through a couple of hoops and the Rainbow School Board was pretty supportive of me trying to do something - as long as I followed the rules," he said.

Rehel hosted a mini three team round robin day of friendlies a few weeks back, "just to test Covid protocols and such", as he explained. Lasalle downed both Lo-Ellen (58-32) and Collège Notre-Dame (60-58), with CND also knocking off the Knights at Lasalle.

Regular season play kicked off last week in both the junior and senior boys loops, with Rehel pleased with what he has seen so far as Lasalle looks to extend a four year city title run that dates back to 2017 (no championship was contested in the spring of 2021).

"I've never coached any of these guys and they've picked up a lot of stuff, real quick," said Rehel. "That was good to see. I'm encouraged by the fact that they are learning so quickly after having a year and a half off, how fast it went from looking terrible to actually playing pretty good basketball."

And a few more games in a short time span this weekend is sure to help the progress along. That, and the fact that the upcoming tournament honours a man who meant so much to so many makes this a win-win-win in the eyes of Joel Rehel.