An award recognizing Alberni’s outstanding player on the senior boys high school team is now named after a legendary Tseshaht athlete.
From now on the MVP award will bear Tom Watts’ name, recognizing the elder’s legacy of sports prowess. The newly named award was presented at Alberni District Secondary School on March 4 with Watts present, who turned 90 on Feb. 2.
ADSS Athletic Director Mike Roberts announced the development before the high school’s basketball teams. Behind him was the Wall of Fame, a display of a few dozen former ADSS students who achieved greatness in sports.
“You will see, if you ever take a look, it’s the sport that they achieved greatness at, whether it be a professional level, a post-secondary level. There’s other categories such as coach or builder, they helped create programs,” explained Roberts about the Wall of Fame. “There’s one individual on this wall that is unique to everyone else.”
Tom Watts is the only person identified simply as ‘athlete’, a recognition of his all-round prowess in sports that included basketball, track and field, soccer and baseball.
“It says athlete,” said Roberts. “Quite simply, Tom excelled at everything he did.”
In his early years Tom Watts attended the Alberni Indian Residential School, which formerly stood on the Tseshaht First Nation’s main reserve. As a teen he moved on to Alberni District Secondary, where an obsession with sports that began in the residential school flourished. Watts played basketball at ADSS in the 1950s, and went on to receive the Tom Longboat Award in 1962, which recognizes an Indigenous athlete for “outstanding contributions to sport in Canada”, states the program’s overview. In 1965 Watts was the sole First Nations player on the Alberni Athletic Senior A basketball team that won the Canadian Men’s Championships.
On March 4 Watts handed the newly named MVP award over to Jayden Miguez, who led ADSS’s senior boys team over the past season. His team made it to the semi-finals in the Vancouver Island championships, where they were edged out by Wellington 88-64.
“The MVP doesn’t just happen in one season. The MVP happens over time,” said senior boys coach Steve Sperger before presenting the accolade to Miguez. “This athlete led his team in junior basketball, he was a big part of the team last year in Grade 11. He helped us get to where we got to.”
The occasion was particularly sweet for Watts, who also stood with his granddaughter, Jayden Knighton, who was named MVP of the ADSS senior girls team for the second year in a row.
