Harrison Florean is a big part of the St. Thomas Tommies men’s basketball team—and not just because he stands six-foot-seven.
The fifth-year forward was hobbled a bit by an ankle injury through the first half of the 2023–24 Atlantic Collegiate Athletic Association season, which he found “insanely frustrating.”
The Tommies currently hold a 9-1 record, being first in the ACAA league and ranked fourth in the country. But Florean’s contribution to the team’s success extends beyond the season statistics.
“Oh, man…he’s just a good person,’” said Tommies head coach John Hickey. “He’s serious, but he brings levity to our group. It’s just perspective…he’s older, has a little more experience in life. He knows when it’s time to growl and when it’s time to just say ‘That was a bad one.’ And that’s important.”
Born and raised in Fredericton, it was natural that he would gravitate toward basketball. His late father Roberto, a six-foot-three-inch centre, played basketball at Fredericton High and went on to play for UNB, helping the Red Raiders, as they were then known, to the Atlantic Universities Athletic Association semi-final in 1980. He continued to play in local leagues after and passed the love of the game on to Harrison.
“He was my best friend,” said Harrison. “We did everything together. In the summers, he was all over the province for the Department of Natural Resources as a tree improvement specialist. In the winters, he would be laid off, and he had a plow truck. So as a little kid, me, him and the dog would pop in the plow truck and we’d go every morning and do, like, 15 driveways. Depending on the storm, we’d get up at four or five a.m. After that, he’d have the whole day off, so he coached me in youth basketball and middle school.”
He played and Roberto coached at Devon Middle School, and Roberto was also an assistant at Leo Hayes, where Harrison played, graduating in 2017. He grew six inches in his Grade 11 year, from six-foot-one to six-foot-seven. “At the start of the year, I couldn’t dunk. By the end of the year, every time I went up, it wasn’t a problem.”
He drew interest from other schools but felt they were too far from home, so he stayed at St. Thomas, where Roberto and his mom, Kelli, attended every game.
“He’d leave work if he had to,” said Harrison. “He refused to sit with my mom, because she talked too much,” he said. “My mom brought a cowbell to every game. My dad loved her, but just couldn’t watch sports beside her. She would sit right above the bench, and dad would hide in the corner of the gym…lean up against the wall with one finger beside the nose and the finger across the lip, and not say a word for the entire game.”
Personality-wise, “he was a goof,” said Harrison with affection. “Mom would send us to the back yard to stack wood, and we’d be throwing them at each other. As a little kid, he would throw me around…it was like having a brother at home. It drove my mother nuts.”
Hickey knew Roberto. Father and son were a lot alike, he said. “Apples and trees,” he chuckled.
Roberto died in November of 2022 due to cancer. Harrison visits the grave “probably twice a week,” he said.
Harrison’s Tommies career has two chapters. He played the 2017–18 and 2018–19 seasons, but took the next two years off, going to work for the city of Fredericton. “I was gone…I was not coming back,” he said. “I was happy doing what I was doing.”
But during the lost COVID year of 2019–20, with the team practicing, he asked Hickey if he could come and play. His mom, Kelli, told him, ‘You might as well go back to school.’ “She wore me down, and here I am,” he said.
This is his last season of playing eligibility. Harrison will be finishing his degree in history this fall semester, and his long-term goal is to pursue a career as a firefighter. But first: a medal at CCAA nationals. The Mount Allison Mounties are hosting the tournament in Sackville March 13-16, 2024.
“I’ll probably throw it on a shelf never to look at it again, but just to have the story to say that we have it. The goal this year is to win it all. We have the roster to do it.”