Kodiaks gearing up for CCAA nationals

By Lethbridge Herald on March 16, 2026.

Nathan Reiter

Lethbridge Herald

The Lethbridge Polytechnic Kodiaks men’s basketball team has never won a CCAA national championship, something they are looking to change this week.

The Kodiaks are in Nanaimo this week after qualifying for the CCAA nationals with a second place finish at the ACAC championships in Lloydminster earlier this month.

Nathaniel Hosannah, a second year forward for the Kodiaks, says the team is looking forward to representing Lethbridge on the national stage.

“We’re excited, we’re ready to put some work in, we know we’re going to see some good teams so we just want to put forth our best effort and make some noise on the stage that a lot of us have never been to.”

While the Kodiak women’s basketball team has won four national titles in their history, the men have never successfully taken home a national banner. In their most recent trip to nationals in 2015, Lethbridge finished with a bronze medal.

The Kodiaks have finished as the national runner-up on two occasions. The first was back in 1989 under head coach Tim Tollestrup. Lethbridge was led on the court that year by Shawn Adams and Lorne Mackenzie who were named to the ACAC All-Conference second team.

In 2011, Lethbridge made a run to the championship game under head coach Mike Hansen where they fell to the Vanier College Cheetahs. Key players from that team included Dom Coward, Morgan Duce and the Reiter brothers, Logan and Jordan.

Hosannah says Lethbridge will need to have confidence in order to come out on top in the tournament.

“Trust is going to be the first thing, trust our system, trust each other and then also just put everything on the court. We only have four days of games, potentially three games straight. We win the first one and take care of business each game as it goes by. We’ve got to be able to put forth our best effort each game and just execute on the highest level.”

All season long, the strength of the Kodiaks has been the ability to defend and then create offense from opponent’s turnovers. In their ACAC championship run, Lethbridge held both NAIT and Lakeland to under 70 points in their two victories.

Kodiak head coach Ryan Heggie says Lethbridge will need to play to that same defensive identity. 

“We have to go there with confidence, for starters, and expecting success, and then working for it. As we talked last week, our identity all year has been on the defensive side. That’s how we’re going to make some noise out there. We can score the ball too, no doubt about it with Levi Balderson, Nathaniel Hosannah, Randall Mongard, Rhett Lewis and Jackson Wright. We have to make noise on the defensive side, because it helps our offense too. It kind of gets us going when we really lock in on defense, whether we’re playing zone or man.”

Lethbridge will begin the tournament on Wednesday night when they take on the host Vancouver Island University (VIU) Mariners at 5 p.m. Alberta time. 

The Mariners are coming off a 19-5 regular season and a PacWest (Pacific Western Athletic Association) championship, defeating Camosun College 78-75 in the gold medal game. Offensively, the Mariners are led by fourth-year guard Keyonte Beals who averaged 20.9 points per game and Kye Kotapski-Tinga who recorded 16.7 points per game.

With the Kodiaks and Mariners having not played each other all season, the factory of unfamiliarity will come into play. Heggie says you can only scout a team so much heading into the matchup.

“We don’t have any experience playing any of the teams in the tournament except for Keyano. We play VIU, the host off the bat. We played them 11 seasons ago in nationals, so it’s been a while since we’ve seen them. That can work in your positive too, not to overscout a team and try to overprepare your guys for everything they’re doing. We do have film on them, and we’re going to do our best to scout the important parts. Once the game starts, a lot of stuff that happens on the court is instinct and regular basketball. IQ and stuff that we work on ourselves just to be able to react to teams that we haven’t scouted before. You can scout everybody, but you’ve got to play the game.”

Lethbridge finds themselves in a similar position to where they were during the ACAC championships. In the semi-final, the Kodiaks defeated the host Lakeland Rustlers in front of a hostile Lloydminster crowd to punch their ticket into the CCAA nationals.

The Kodiaks will look to embrace the spoiler role once again in front of another full gymnasium against VIU.

“A lot of these kids have already played in front of packed houses in high school.” Heggie explained. “Of course in Lakeland, that was a full house, and it’s going to help prepare us  because we’ve already been there in this playoff run. The atmosphere, I think it’s going to be fun, and we have to enjoy the moment. I don’t think there’s a lot of pressure on us in that situation, so just go out and try to play as loose as possible. You know what they say, get through the first punch of the home team and the home crowd, and then go from there, see what happens.”

Hosannah says he enjoys and relishes the experience to play spoiler in front of a hostile crowd.

“I love it. I’m interested in seeing those guys and being able to go out into their home crowd and just be able to play Kodiaks basketball. I think if we trust our system, we trust our coach, we trust our players, and the five that are on the court, we’re going to be able to make some noise and do what we do best. It’s a fun feeling to be able to disrupt that home crowd.“

The rest of the field includes the Mohawk Mountaineers, Camosun Chargers, Dynamiques de Brebeuf, St. Thomas Tommies and Humber Hawks.