Hoping to build on a season ending bronze medal finish in the 2008 Toronto Asian games during the summer, the North Stars Open team will start the pre-season in the Peel Police Diversity Tournament.

The 2007-2008 season proved very disappointing.  The Open team could not defend their 3-year reign as Open division champions with an early exit in the playoffs.  And for the first time in 8 years, Coach Jose & the North Stars was shut out from a PHYBA championship victory... In fact, this is only the second year of the 12+ years where none of  Coach Jose's team has failed to make the championship game - he's been depressed for the entire summer!.  It was bound to happen... stagnancy and complacency in the elite open team killed their competitive fire, and with the younger teams out of the limelight, and a lack of coaching resources for such a large organization, the decline of the North Stars is inevitable.  Thankfully, the Open team renewed their efforts in the summer with the bronze medal finish against very tough Asian all-star teams.

Hopefully this year, a good placing in the Diversity Tournament will help jump start the open team.  Come out and watch them represent the Mississauga Filipino community as they play in University of Toronto Mississauga on November 1st & 2nd in the Peel Police Diversity Tournament.  Door prizes and diverse Ethnic foods and refreshments will be available on Saturday.  Click on the attached poster or the handout link below to download the official program.

A.J. Mandani & Clint Villardo begin their NCAA scholarships this year.

A.J. finished his 2 year JUCO scholarship at South Suburban College in Chicago, with a 5th place finish in the national tournament.  His effort did not go unnoticed as he was offered a scholarship with the University of Missouri, Science and Technology, in Rolla, Missouri.

Through persistent effort, Clint Villardo is now in William Penn University in Iowa.  An early North Star as a Tyke and Peewee, Clint was instrumental for North Star's strong results in many tournaments.

Both join the Roque sisters who are now in their 3rd year at Cleveland State University.  Last year their leadership led Cleveland State to their conference win and the first ever berth in the NCAA national tournament.  Though they had an early exit, losing to 2nd rank Stanford in the first round, their national tournament experience must have been unimaginable.

Congratulations to all 4 players, and continue to build on the experiences that started with the North Stars.  All the North Stars staff are extremely proud.

It was a busy summer for the North Stars Open team - 3 big tournaments completed, and one more before PHYBA opens its 2007-08 season.

 With the North Stars team emerging with as PHYBA's 3-Peat Open Champions, the PHYBA executives asked Jose to put together an Open team to compete in Filipino Basketball Association of North America (FBA-NA) tournament in Washington DC.  Using North Stars open team, and supplementing with a couple of strong players,  they tested their mettle in Toronto tournaments before going to the big one in DC.

The Mabuhay Cup was eye-opening, as 10 of the strongest Filipino teams met for bragging rights to Toronto.  The team, going in North Stars uniforms, and only with North Star players, realized that they were undersized and undermanned, against a lot of these select teams.  Though they would lead early in the majority of their games, the short bench, lack of size in the paint, and lack of experience against this level of opposition, showed in the lacklustre results.

Adjustments were made to add more size in the post, more experience at the point, and stress the need to run the team offense.  Again, going as North Stars, they entered the Asian Games, and fared much better against the various ethnic teams.  With the very strong Sri Lankan team being the only team they could not master, the North Stars were very proud of their Bronze medal results.

Though the 3 valued North Stars could not make the Washington trip, the addition of 2 dominant perimeter players that included a North Star devotee now playing college ball in the States, put the team at ease for the DC trip.

The DC trip proved to be a great source of morale and team building, and also showed phenomenal basketball.  Houston, Winnipeg, and Chicago were all strong teams, with Washington dominating all and winning the championship.   And though the PHYBA team, now in Mississauga Orange, showed they were capable of competing with almost all the teams, it was their celebration of their very promising result that will always be remembered.  With a great deal of experience under the belt, the team hopes to improve on these results when FBA-NA tournament will occur in Winnipeg for 2008.

Summer is gone... but there is one more tournament left... all the team members that played in the summer tournaments will get one more crack at playing together, as they represent the Mississauga Filipino community in the Peel Region Police basketball tournament in November... GOOD LUCK.