C
anada Elite co-founder Shane James was at the HoopDome, a basketball facility in Toronto’s Downsview Park, when he saw a Grade 8 Alexander-Walker playing pickup against grown men. He was surprised. “Usually when you see a young kid playing with men, they kind of take a back seat and they’re quiet and they don’t say much,” James says. “But he was in the mix, man. He was getting after it. He was talking shit. He was hitting guys. He was being physical.”
James grew up in Scarborough and played for Canada’s first AAU team, Grassroots Elite, before captaining the junior national team in high school. He got a scholarship to Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore in 2003 before playing professionally overseas. While he was in college, some kids from his former high school started asking him questions about how to get a Division I scholarship, so James created a program called Triple Balance Community Services to help the youth with homework, nutrition, basketball knowledge, and connections.
After his professional career came to an end, James returned to Toronto and merged with a nearby program called Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education (YAAACE), run by Devon Jones, to form Canada Elite AAU in 2014, playing on the Under Armour circuit and helping more than 80 Canadian players pursue careers in the NCAA, U Sports, the Canadian Elite Basketball League (CEBL), and the NBA. James also created the Canadian Youth Basketball League (CYBL) to provide Canadian AAU teams with opportunities to compete against each other in the spring before heading to America for bigger competitions.