A Holy Trinity Academy hoopster is going from a Knight to a Viking.
HTA Knight point guard Elias Ralph will be a University of Victoria Viking in the fall.
“He’s a special player, a six-foot-six guard with a skill-set where he can play any of the backcourt positions,” said U Vic men’s basketball coach Craig Beaucamp. “He can handle the ball, shoot it, come off ball screens - he’s a very skilled player, with good length and athleticism.”
Ralph, a six-foot-six guard, said U Vic was an appealing option – and not just because it gets him away from the harsher Alberta winters.
“For me, it was the best of both worlds, being able to play some in my first year and on a competitive team – and the weather is a lot better than it is here,” Ralph said from his Okotoks home.
Even COVID-19 can’t hide a tall, talented basketball player from university coaches.
Beaucamp was well aware of Ralph’s talents despite the Knights not playing a game since March of 2020.
“Recruiting from afar hasn’t changed that much due to COVID in the age of the Internet,” Beaucamp said. “We have video and things like that to keep track of things. His high school coaches and club coaches also sent out information about him.
“When we watched the video, we said: ‘Hey, this guy has a chance to be very good.”’
The only complaints Knights coach Sam Aiello had about Ralph’s play is he hasn’t seen it in an HTA game for the past 11 months.
He has seen plenty of Ralph in the past five years.
“I have coached Elias since he was in Grade 8, he played with me in club basketball as well,” Aiello said. “I could see that he had that potential.
“To watch his maturity and his development in the last few years has been nice to see.”
Aiello and Beaucamp spoke early and often in the new year, after Ralph informed the Knights coach he was interested in going to Victoria.
“We started talking back and forth about Elias and that is pretty well how it went,” Aiello said. “I looked at their roster and I thought Elias would be a good fit. He has a chance to make an impact at that school.”
Talking to Ralph and his family was a clincher for the U Vic coach.
“Elias and his family are such good people,” Beaucamp said. “You combine that character with his skills, that’s a real good package with the potential to be a really good university player.”
Beaucamp plans to use Ralph as either a shooting guard or small forward.
Okotoks basketball fans will have to look twice the next time they see Ralph on the court. He’s much bigger than his last game in March of 2020.
“He has really hit the weights hard,” Beaucamp said. “If you look at pictures of him before COVID and you look at him now, he’s really transformed his body.
“That is one of the biggest pieces at playing at the next level. You go from young boys to men. Elias physically has changed his body.”
Ralph and the Vikes should be on the court next season, the coach said.
There was no Canada West season for 2020-21 but Beaucamp is optimistic with the vaccines starting to roll out there will be some sort of season in 2021-22. The Vikings were 15-5 and finished fifth in the Can West standings in 2019-20.
And the Vikings’ plans are to play the first-year Ralph.
“We haven’t recruited him to red-shirt by any means,” Beaucamp said. “What he gets as far as minutes played, that will work itself out, like any team.”
Ralph is the lone player recruited by the Vikings this season. As well the team has a few players who are not returning.
Ralph, an honour student at HTA, plans to take general studies at U of Vic in his first year, before focusing on kinesiology in his second year.
