At six feet, four inches tall, Tanner Gresmak is a young man who makes big first impressions, and not only as a result of his sizable stature.
Driven by an athletic enthusiasm proportional to his size, our April Athlete of the Month surprises even himself at times.
“He’s had a couple of monstrous dunks,” Kalvin Beuerlein says.
Beuerlein coached Gresmak as he captained a chronically short-handed senior boys basketball team at Ladysmith Secondary School through the 2012-13 season.
“He was in Wellington for playoffs and during warm-up, he dunked and actually broke the [glass] backboard,” Beuerlein adds with a laugh.
“I don’t know how he pulled it off. I’ve never seen that happen and I didn’t see how it happened, but it happened. I heard the smash and I turned around and he was walking away and there was glass all over the floor,” Beuerlein adds as he imitates Gresmak’s attempt at shielding himself from a shower of shattered glass.
“It delayed the whole playoff tournament by quite a while so a few people weren’t very happy,” he says.
Beuerlein believes Gresmak has the size, talent and motivation necessary for varsity basketball, he says.
LSS began its season with a trim nine-player roster, losing an international student partway through the year. Beuerlein says the 17-year-old forward “really took a lot of weight on his shoulders as far as scoring and rebounding during games [is concerned} and guys looked to him to do a lot of the work. His leadership was really valuable.”
Beuerlein says he nominated Gresmak for the all-star squad based on a per-game average of “23 or 25 points” with a rebound average “near double-digits.”
Regarding the future of Gresmak’s athletic career, Beuerlein remains convinced that the 215-pound senior should play university or college ball.
“He’s talented. He’s big. And once he gets into a team where the dedication level around him is very high, I think he could be a very solid college player,” Beuerlein says.
Gresmak is noncommittal when I broach the subject of college ball with him.
“I don’t know,” he replies. “I’m kind of thinking of going to VIU, but I’m not really sure yet.”
A part-time Grade 12 student at LSS, Gresmak is scheduled to graduate in June. If he chooses to attend Vancouver Island University, it will be in pursuit of a trade of some sort, he says, and a VIU Mariners’ jersey.
Gresmak wrapped up his basketball season Saturday, April 6, at the Vancouver Island High School All-Star Classic at St. Margaret’s School in Victoria, he says. The tournament pits elite North Island players against their South Island rivals in a contest for annual bragging rights.
Gresmak, the lone Ladysmith player on the Northern squad, played timidly for the first three quarters of the game, scoring a well-below-average seven points.
“I guess I was nervous,” he says, “because I’ve never played in a big game like that.”
In spite of his nerves, the North pulled ahead early, building up a 20-point lead before the South hit its stride and staged a comeback.
Gresmak watched from the sidelines as his team fought to maintain a dwindling lead in the early minutes of the fourth quarter. With eight minutes left to play, he stepped onto the court in time to score successive fast breaks before using his size to plant himself firmly in the post.
“They kept feeding it to me in the post,” he says. “That’s where I got most of my points.”
He can’t recall how many points he scored, but his late-game leadership earned him a nod as the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
Beuerlein missed the all-star game, he says, but he spoke with Gresmak shortly after the game.
“It was funny,” he adds. “I’d talked to him before the game and I’d asked him, ‘Are you thinking about playing somewhere next year?’ and he was kind of humming and hawing, saying he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. He got a hold of me after the game to tell me how he did and that he won MVP and I asked him: ‘Now are you thinking about playing somewhere else?’ And he said ‘definitely,’ adding that he’d talk to VIU. I think he just needed to see that level of competition and commitment from other guys and to see where he stands amongst the other players on the Island.”
While he mulls over that decision, Gresmak will focus on rugby as his team advances to post-season play.
Gresmak scored LSS’s final try during their 38-5 home-turf win over the Wellington Wildcats April 25. The 49ers will play their first provincial qualifier at home Monday, May 6.
