This is a profile that I put on the Scarborough Masters League web page a few years ago. I hope it all fits here. Bill Oliver Ross May profile Sep/07 Ross May has been a stalwart in the Scarborough Masters League for many years as a player, coach and manager and it is sad to see him retire. Here is a brief look at the career of one of Canada's finest basketball players. Ross' career began in elementary school in a community where all the public schools that fed into Runnymede Collegiate were heavily into basketball. Basketball at Runnymede was a premiere sport, with most games being featured on a Friday night. If you were not there prior to the junior game there were practically no seats left in the gym. Ross started out in midget basketball but the senior coach Jack Luke, asked him to practise with the seniors. He could not play since it was unheard of for a freshman to play senior high school basketball in Toronto in that era. Bob Thompson, one of the great coaches at Runnymede, ran a "Y" program from the school and the players ran the gym so they played every day but Friday and Saturday morning, at Runnymede. In his 2 years as a senior (1957 and 1958), they won the TDIAA each year and that was the start of a run of Runnymede predominance in Toronto area basketball, which continues to this day. Ross was a Toronto Star first team all star both years but in different positions, a first in the paper's history. In Ross' senior year he was recruited by several Universities but that wily old veteran John Metras of Western, arranged a game with London Beck prior to a Mustang game in London and Ross came away in awe of the Purple and White. Ross' father had died when Ross was only 10 and there was no money to send him to London to attend university, but John Metras made sure the "friends of Mustang basketball" looked after his tuition and books etc. A scholarship by any other name. John Metras was a U of Michigan footballer and lived by tradition. Ross had made the starting 5 as a freshman but he had beat out the captain and by John's rules the captain started and played 5 minutes, then Ross went in. Metras was the first coach into playing the USA teams and Ross' first game out of high school was against Bradley, ranked 10th in the nation. He says he was "deked out of his jock" so any times in that game that he felt he was naked. Western played a number of ranked teams every year; Loyola of Chicago, Bowling Green of Ohio and Michigan to name a few and Ross remembers checking Dave DeBusschere (of New York Knick fame) 3 years in row and DeBusschere never changed his game. He would take Ross to the corner with a couple of dribbles and at 6' 8", would go straight up for an easy 2 from 20 feet! Western was always in the National Collegiate final and won it twice. The year Ross was captain, Bob Gage of the London Free press, in his book Mustang Tales, called the 1961 team the best defensive team in Mustang history; they only lost once. Ross was freshman athlete of the year at Western in 1959, and the team was OQUAA champions in '60 and '61. Out of school and travelling all over Ontario for Ford Motors, and with a young family Ross was basically out of basketball for almost 20 years until the late Don Nelles called him to play in the first World Masters Games in Toronto in 1985. But thanks to his good friend and high school team mate Ted Clarke and the Green brothers Bill and Jim, Ross stopped smoking and lost some weight and started with the Scarborough League in 1985, thinking if he could play till he was 40 that would be a real accomplishment. Ross was still playing at 68 but according to himself, "really not that well even for an old fart of my vintage". Ross says, "my years playing with a great group of guys in the Scarborough league have been of immense satisfaction for me and I wish Bill and Bob every success in the future". We all wish Ross good health and much happiness! You have been a good friend and team mate.