Davis: Iconic Luther Invitational Tournament honours another sports icon this weekend

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Rob Vanstone fell in love with LIT upon his first introduction in 1988, when the high school basketball tournament was half as old (and half as big) as it is now.

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With eight senior boys and eight senior girls teams vying for titles this weekend, the 71st annual event was slated for Thursday afternoon until Saturday night inside Luther College High School’s two gymnasiums on Dewdney Avenue. And its honoured guest this year is Vanstone, formerly a sports writer/columnist/editor with the Regina Leader-Post, a graduate of Campbell Collegiate and a first-year reporter when he got assigned to cover the 1988 tournament, coincidentally won by his alma mater.

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“I was sitting right there,” said Vanstone, pointing to a spot in Luther’s old gym, now known as the “Merlis Belsher Centre.” “Riffel was playing Edmonton’s Ross Sheppard Thunderbirds. Ross Sheppard had a six-foot guard named Lema Vaz, who dunked over two guys just as I sat down. I was like, ‘What is this?’

“I interviewed Riffel’s Brent Ripplinger and Devin Toth right over there and I just loved it. I’d never seen anything like it. I’d heard about it but didn’t come to the tournament when I was at Campbell.”

Vanstone has missed only two LITs since then, once because he was assigned to cover a Regina Pats hockey game and in 2010 because he was working inside the Winter Olympics Press Centre in Whistler, B.C. Although he left the Leader-Post in 2023 to become the senior journalist and historian for the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders, Vanstone still covers LIT as a writer for the tournament’s website.

Every year the tournament honours someone from its past. Last year it was former Luther Lions basketball coach Dick Stark and his 1984 team, celebrating the 40th  anniversary of their memorable championship victory over the LeBoldus Golden Suns in overtime.

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Others feted have been former Luther teacher and LIT director Gerry Harris, former executive director of the Saskatchewan High Schools Athletic Association Ken Vollet, the late “Voice of the LIT” Ed Robinson and long-time Leader-Post sports editor Bob Hughes. In 2019, after announcing that Glen Nelson was being acknowledged for a stellar basketball career highlighted by five seasons with the University of Regina Cougars, Nelson was honoured posthumously weeks after dying of cancer.

Luther has won the boys event four times, the latest in 2006 and the first at LIT’s debut in 1953, when games were played half-court. An informal girls event was added in 2013 and became an official part of LIT in 2016, with Luther winning that debut after the construction of the 1,000-seat Semple Gymnasium allowed for two full-scale tournaments being held on the same weekend.

The Raymond Comets won the boys and girls divisions last year, but neither team was invited to attend the 2025 LIT. Tournament director Troy Casper said it’s important to invite different teams, especially rotating schools from bigger centres like Winnipeg or Saskatoon or Edmonton or Calgary, just to retain interest from a variety of basketball communities. Teams from Raymond and Cardston, Alta., traditionally have strong basketball programs and the top squads from the cities are always strong, Casper said.

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In addition to the host squads, two Regina teams qualify for the boys and girls events. Martin and Riffel are in the boys draw while LeBoldus and Miller are in the girls draw, joining four Manitoba teams, three from Alberta and three from Saskatoon.

Although a Luther staff member serves as LIT director, the event is staged by the students. They choose a theme — this year it’s “Hollywood” — and decorate the gyms with appropriate artwork. The student committees handle hospitality, arrange a pre-tournament media conference, set up concessions, clean up the facilities and look after scorekeeping duties for an event that has become known as one of the pre-eminent high school tournaments in Canada.

“It epitomizes the purity of sport,” said Vanstone. “You walk into the adjacent gymnasium and on the left side of the wall it says, ‘Sportsmanship.’ You know everybody’s in it for the right reasons.

“Everybody’s here to have fun. It’s so student-oriented. It’s so people-oriented. It’s like a reunion. They might not see somebody for 362 days, but you come here and you catch up with them immediately. You probably know where they’re going to sit, because even the people just kind of gravitate to where they usually sit.”

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For a few years LIT organizers even constructed a special media seat for Vanstone, just so he could properly cover the tournament.

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