The Tri-City Tide will hit the court for competition in March.
They’re the newest addition to The Basketball League, who have 44 teams in North America, including the Port City Power out of Saint John.
The Tide will be based in Greater Moncton.
“We’ll be playing at a Crandall for the first season, and that’s also where we’ll be practicing, and everything will be happening there,” says Team Market Owner Dustin Caissie.
Discussions are still underway to recruit players to the team. Caissie expects announcements about signings will be in the coming weeks.
“We don’t have a coach signed yet. We’re in discussions with a few people, but we just have to make strategic decisions that are a representative of a big team in the region as well.”
The season will officially start in March, but there will be a few pre-season games in February.
“We’re hoping to build the team with locals first and then fill the team with others from Ontario and the United States and Montreal. Not everyone goes to the NBA, not everyone goes NCAA. Some people stick around here,” Caissie says.
The previous East Coast Basketball league folded, reportedly leaving some of the players and advertisers without funds owed to them. We wondered how this new league would rebuild the faith amongst New Brunswickers.
“I’m going to be frank with you, I think he (the Owner) was a scam artist, who came in and he said, I’m going to try to start a team. This guy didn’t set foot in Canada, and he took advantage of kind-hearted people trying to make a team work, and he used them, and he shipped players down here. He didn’t pay them. He didn’t have any financial backing. This isn’t the case here. This is an established League. We have financial backing. The players are going to get paid. They’re going to get well taken care of. Anyone in the part of this organization is going to get well taken care of,” Caissie stressed.
A news conference was held over the weekend and around 70 people came out to hear about the new team.
“People are excited. We’re getting lots of messages. We have players interested in playing, even some of those players who were on the Moncton Motion reaching out to us, saying they want to come back and play here. These are guys who got burned by the ECBL but they this city so much, they want to come back.”
Caissie says they are starting small and they are being realistic, “We’re not jumping into a big stadium and breaking the budget in the first year.”
