British Star Shines on a New Court
- Benjamin Dool
- Nov 19, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
My early-season feelings are new and familiar this October afternoon. I’m watching from the stands as the St. Thomas University men’s basketball team plays Mount Saint Vincent University (MSV).
For the pavst four seasons, I played basketball for St. Thomas, my university in Fredericton, N.B.
Our team is part of an East Coast small college league that includes MSV, a university in Halifax, N.S. I still get the jitters watching former teammates and new players, squirming at turnovers or missed shots. I still jump up in my seat when a big play is made. And I have the play-by-play running through my mind.
It’s Ceejay Hanson I’m here to see play. He recently transferred to STU from Cape Breton University, but his basketball journey has taken him a lot further than that.
The Mount Saint Vincent team has a competitive group of players who push the ball up the floor with intensity, and there’s a bitterness in this rivalry. I remember the nail-biting championship in March 2022, a game with tides of momentum till the final seconds; the Mount Saint Vincent team left St. Thomas’s home gym with a 69-67 win.
I was a part of that St. Thomas’s team, and what I remember most from that game was the sting of the loss, walking out of the gym with all the players I spent a year getting to know and how, for some of them, it was the last shot at playing on the team. There were a lot of emotions that day.
Now that my basketball career has ended, I’m not sure if I ever had a love for the game, or if it was just the atmosphere, the teammates and the coaches. Or maybe it was the competition that kept me playing as long as I did.
I do know it’s an essential part of who I am now, as well as the fan I am.
It’s exciting to watch the guys who really love it, and Ceejay Hanson, originally from Manchester, United Kingdom, loves the game.
If you haven’t talked to Hanson or watched him play, you’d probably think he’s loud all the time, but he’s not; he’s only loud on the basketball court.
Now he’s running back to the bench, huddling with his teammates as they share chest bumps, high fives, and cheers of encouragement.
He takes a break on the bench. A few whistles later, the score is 9-3 in favour of Saint Thomas.
Hanson started playing basketball when he was seven, choosing to avoid a cold football pitch in one of the most football-crazed cities in the world, Manchester. Expectations for Hanson were high because his mother had been a basketball star in her youth, playing for the U.K. national team. But for Hanson, in the beginning, nothing came easy.
“I was a pretty mediocre player when I was younger. I was good, but only really with shooting,” he said. “I wasn’t a great defender or passer; I could barely dribble.
“I really found a passion when I was about 16. I made the national team and from then, that’s when my goal to leave the U.K. started too, and I just felt like trying to find somewhere that’s different.”
When he was 15, Hanson moved away from home to join an elite basketball program in Glasgow, about two hours away from Manchester. That was when he began to study the game, watching NBA players like Kevin Durant for shooting and Jamal Crawford’s playmaking, but always focusing on what made him and his team the best. He began learning to be more than a shooter.
“I realized at a pretty young age that there were also guys that were better than me, and I didn't take it to heart. I just wanted to be on the team and play a lot, so that's why I focused on passing more than shooting the ball or dribbling the ball. I take pride in my vision and seeing other people on the court, because I feel like basketball is a team sport. It's not an individual aspect. I don't really care about stats or how many points I have. It's more, did we win the game or not? That's the mindset that I have.”
Ceejay Hanson subs back on with a minute left, up 17-10. A Mount Saint Vincent player makes his free throw, playing out until the quarter finished, with a 17-12 score for St. Thomas. Mount Vincent fights back after a slow start.
The second quarter starts with a selection of plays in which St. Thomas swings the ball and makes the extra pass to open teammates. But nothing is falling through the net when they shoot. Mount Saint Vincent begins to claw back into reach at 20-19. But with a defensive push and shots starting to fall through the net, St. Thomas brings it back up to 28-19, with another forced timeout from the Mount Saint Vincent bench, halfway through the quarter.
Hanson says the biggest difference he noticed when he began to play basketball in Canada was defence. In the U.K., there was more shot-making and passing; that’s what he is trying to bring to St. Thomas.
“We've grown as a team over the past couple of weeks, from individual basketball to a lot more team basketball,” he says. “I came from a school where it was really a dog-eat-dog world. You have to fight for your spot. You have to fight for your minutes. You have to fight for everything in practice. If you didn't dive on the floor, you weren't playing.”
He’s tried to bring that energy to St. Thomas, but he is also learning that there’s more to a team than this. "It’s the biggest blessing,” he says. “Honestly, I’ve made a lot of friends here already. I've only been here for two months, and on and off the court, we're just way more together as a team. And it's the best feeling, just knowing that everyone's on the same page and everyone wants to win.”
The second quarter ends with a dagger step-back three from the Mount Saint Vincent side, slightly strengthening their grip, but St. Thomas goes to the locker room with a comfortable 40-33-point lead.
St. Thomas starts strong in the third with another forced timeout four minutes into the quarter, up 52-43, with Ceejay subbing off at the whistle.
I found a certain joy in my seat watching the game unfold. I could see the team’s promise. I left basketball to pursue new opportunities and greener pastures, but to be able to watch the team fly around with such intensity brought some colour to the court.
“My end goal is to play professional basketball for a little bit,” Hanson says. “I want to be a teacher when I'm done playing or even coach, but I feel like the knowledge that I've gained over the past, let's say, six years, playing national teams, playing different types of basketball, I've just seen there's so much more to basketball.”
Ceejay subs off, up 76-62 in the fourth quarter, and comes back to the floor for the last four minutes. Mount Saint Vincent begins to dig into their final fight, bringing the score to 82-74. The game ends 94-89 for St. Thomas.
After the final buzzer, I felt a familiar excitement, the excitement I used to get playing.
“I’ve learned that if you don't ask, you don't get,” Hanson says. “I mean, that's, that's a big one for me. Like, if you don't reach out, if you don't put in the effort, you're not gonna get it. That's the biggest thing that I learned last year. I still believed that there was a chance to play, and that's one thing that I'm super grateful for. I’m super, super grateful for being here
I left the gym thinking about basketball and how it is a game of giving and receiving. I thought about how, with two minutes left in the third quarter, a teammate stole a pass, and Hanson ran behind him shouting, “Backboard! Backboard!”
In that moment, he received exactly what he asked for and worked for.
Off the backboard for Ceejay Hanson.
Maybe I do love the game more than I thought I did.