In his backyard in South Africa, Siby Diomande imagines an opposing player standing in front of him. He moves left to right, dribbling the ball, picturing how he’s going to get past the figure. Once the opposing player is out of his way he drives to the net. Swish. 

Diomande, now a fourth-year business management student at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), comes from an athletic family. His parents were athletes in high school and believed sport fosters a sense of community and grit. They put Diomande and his brother in all kinds of sports, like roller skating, rugby and soccer. 

“Sports were pretty much mandatory growing up,” he says. 

His love for the game morphed into a dream of playing high level basketball. In 2017, he got a taste of what that could look like. The Jr. NBA program—an initiative aimed at developing youth basketball players—came to Johannesburg, South Africa and Diomande’s friend told him about the league, introducing him to organized basketball.

It wasn’t a smooth transition going from playing on an imaginary court to playing on a real team, especially since most of the kids were also new to the game. But Diomande quickly fell in love with it. It became all he wanted to do after school, spending hours at the rim in his backyard. He watched highlight reels of his favourite players and tutorials on how to jump higher. 

He enjoyed the adrenaline building inside him while playing under pressure. The mental challenge of playing basketball gave him confidence not only in-game but also outside of the sport. 

“Seeing yourself perform well under pressure kind of does something for you even outside of basketball,” says Diomande. “I just feel like it gives me a big sense of confidence that I am able to do anything.” 

Once Diomande graduated from the program, he continued to play rep basketball in South Africa. He found a place on an under-18 team and was happy to keep playing the game.

However, in the summer of 2021, Diomande’s father announced his family would be moving to Switzerland, another of the many countries he’d live in for his father’s work. When he arrived, it was hard to make friends and leaving his community in South Africa took a toll.

“This is my senior year of high school. I have to make friends just for one year of school. I didn’t want to do it,” says Diomande. 

So he resorted to the one thing he knew would bring him comfort. Diomande picked up his basketball. While looking for a gym to play, he found a group of people who’d formed a team. Diomande asked if they were looking for players. 

Aside from a few of them who spoke English, there was a language barrier on the team. Despite this, Diomande says everyone tried their best to communicate. The team liked each other, they got along and they played well. 

After his senior year wrapped up, Diomande was once again on the move. This time though, he’d be moving himself, for school. He traveled to Canada in 2022—the sixth country he’s lived in—to study. 

He had an easier transition in Canada than Switzerland. His peers spoke English and he quickly made friends through basketball. But in his time thus far, there’s been a hole in his life where competitive basketball used to live, he says. 

During his first semester, he wanted to try out for the Bold men’s basketball team. After tracking down the coach, he finally got his shot—but didn’t make the cut. Diomande had opportunities to play for low-division schools in the U.S. but wasn’t interested, he says. 

At this point, Diomande had played competitive basketball for five years, so having to stop was devastating. It felt like his upward ascent in the sport was crashing down. 

Sport doesn’t work out for everyone. Sometimes you’ll love a game, spend hours tweaking your craft, skip nights out or even move away from home, all in the hopes of reaching a higher level but never achieve it in the end.

In fact, this is likely the more common story. According to a report from Canadian Tire, 22 per cent of youth in Ontario play hockey but only around 300 players are selected for the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) priority selection. And among those who get in, only 20 per cent actually get drafted to the NHL. In other sports, chances of going pro are similarly meagre.

And it’s not just competition which blocks many athletes’ journey to the top. Sometimes life gets in the way. Things like income, socioeconomic status and family issues can put a player’s career on the bench. A 2024 report from RBC found the average cost of playing hockey in Canada sits between $4,478 and $7,371 a year. Other roadblocks can come from the games themselves, many players face injuries like concussions which render them unable to play their sport.

Sports organizations face barriers too, according to a 2022 report from Canadian Tire, 75 per cent of these organizations say the cost of running activities has spiked in the years following the pandemic. Without strong organizations and resources to back you, making it in your sport can be much more challenging.

For many, the prospect of leaving a sport behind is a tough reality but one they have to face. Sports culture puts winners on a pedestal, so when life takes you out of the game, the fall can be hard.

As Howie Martin cuts across the neutral zone, he receives a pass. But what he doesn’t see coming is an opposing player flying towards him. The player makes contact, crushing Martin with the impact. Thinking he’s fine, he gets up and continues to play the rest of the game. 

After it’s over, Martin—who was just 13 years old—heads to the car with his parents. Once he’s in his seat, he feels off. He’s slurring, his body shivering while sweat streams down his body. 

His parents take him to the emergency room. Once the car is parked, Martin and his parents make their way inside. Many hours pass, most of which Martin will not be able to recall later.

“Where are you from?” asked the doctor. “Boston,” Martin responds. He had never been to Boston.

He’d suffered his first concussion and it wouldn’t be his last. He experienced at least five more in the coming years—none all as big as the first but they continued to pile up. 

Like Diomande, Martin, who is now 39, was another kid with a sports dream. As is the case with a lot of hockey players, he was introduced to the game at a young age by a dad who also played hockey in his youth. He began skating as a toddler and joined organized hockey in kindergarten.

At age six, his dad found a way to get him playing against eight-year-olds. As a bigger kid, he was able to blend in with older players so much that his coaches were shocked when they found out how old he really was. From there, Martin played for various teams in Toronto from the ages of 10 to his mid-teens. 

Making it into the OHL has likely crossed the minds of most teenagers playing high-level hockey. For Martin, playing in the ‘O’ was the ultimate dream. 

In the spring of 2002, two years after his first concussion, he and his parents are gathered around a large box-like desktop monitor. A 15-year-old Martin anxiously waits for his name to appear on the screen.
Before the OHL draft switched to a live event like it is today, prospects waited for their names to appear in an online list. 

Martin refreshed the page over and over. He knew teams were interested in him but depending on where other players got selected, it could impact where he landed. 

Within an hour, the first round was wrapping up. Martin wasn’t expecting to go in the first but seeing other players get drafted before him at the start of the second round led him to wonder, is this gonna happen? 

One more click erased all his anxiety. There it is. Next to the 27th pick for the Sudbury Wolves, the name “Howie Martin” appeared. Cheers erupt from his parents.  “That was a pretty cool moment for me and my parents,” he says.

Wanting to be humble, he says he kept quiet about his hockey endeavours around his peers. His now wife, whom he met in high school, didn’t even know what level he played at the time.

“It was an exciting time,” says Martin. “It didn’t really hit me until August when I was moving out. Like, ‘holy smokes, I’m 15 and I’m moving out.’” 

He says it was hard at first leaving Toronto at a young age and he got homesick. Being a younger guy on the team, he didn’t play very much either. After playing a scrimmage with his parents in attendance, Martin took his dad aside. 

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said. “You’re doing fine,” his dad responded. “I don’t want to be up here,” Martin said. 

Martin’s parents told him to give it some time. Knowing he was struggling, the team decided to move him from his original billeting house to another family who were housing a teammate. The move made for a better arrangement now that he was with a peer.

He spent the next four seasons in the OHL, one with the Wolves and the rest with the Brampton Battalion and a stint at the end with the Owen Sound Attack. Despite a professional tryout with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Martin never got drafted by an NHL team like he’d been hoping from the beginning. Now he had a decision to make.

“As you get older and you start to realize the ultimate dream of the NHL might not be happening, you start to question, ‘do I still want to do this?’” he says.

Diomande was disappointed when he didn’t make the Bold. “It definitely felt like there was a huge void,” he says.

He wanted to fill the void with other things—like hobbies—but felt he couldn’t. His routine was now taken up with school and work. He felt purposeless without basketball. Though he sometimes went to the Recreation and Athletic Centre (RAC) at TMU to play pickup, he says it never really worked. 

“I was literally doing nothing good with my time,” he says.

Aside from the winter 2023 semester where Diomande says the competition at the RAC was intense with large crowds coming to watch, the same fervour wasn’t repeated in future semesters. He tried out again for the Bold in the fall of 2023, but still didn’t make the team. 

The same semester, Diomande landed a job at the RAC supervising drop-in and facilitated basketball among other sports. But watching on the sidelines while others played only made him realize how much he missed playing. “There was some form of emptiness that needed some type of fulfillment,” he says.

He decided to do something about the feeling. Diomande discovered the Brodie League—an independent competitive men’s league in Toronto—in the fall of 2023. And the following semester, another opportunity arose. 

Diomande’s friend was looking to interview someone about basketball for a film project. And as the subject for his documentary, Diomande felt inspired to create one of his own. “This has to be a sign,” Diomande thought to himself. 

He created his own series alongside a friend and eventually “Pathfinder” was born, a documentary series centering basketball and mental health, two things Diomande felt he knew very well. The series highlights what happens to athletes who no longer play their sport. 

The series is nearing completion and a screening will take place March 22 at It’s Ok* Studios on Queen West. The project has given Diomande another way to stay connected to the sport, even if he’s not playing it.

“I’m working on a project that has to do with basketball and people who play basketball…that brings me almost just as much joy,” he says. “I’ll still always have love for playing the game.”  

No longer in the Brodie League, Diomande is back playing at the RAC these days. Although his relationship with the sport has changed, the longing to play hasn’t really gone away. 

“If I’m being honest, there’s still an ache to play basketball,” says Diomande. “But…now I still have an outlet that keeps me connected to basketball. I can still go watch basketball and be okay.”

For Martin, making the choice whether to continue in hockey was fairly simple. Every year he was in the OHL, he received compensation as part of his education package. So, instead of taking up offers from the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL), Martin chose to attend the University of Prince Edward Island, which he also received a scholarship for.

Though he played recreational hockey there, in his final year at university, Martin decided to give it up. A concussion the year prior prevented him from getting back into action in his third year. Feeling frustrated, Martin found himself thinking, why am I doing this?

He felt he had been missing out on a lot, so the summer before his senior year, he and his friends decided to simply have fun.

After earning his degree, Martin got married to his high school sweetheart. In an effort to pay for a wedding, honeymoon and a condo, he worked a full-time job at the same company as his dad, and would end his evenings working shifts at FritoLay—where his mother worked at the time.  

After he got married, Martin started working for FritoLay full-time in hopes to pay for teachers’ college. His application was waitlisted, so he worked another year.

Around this time, however, an ECHL team called the Beast came to Brampton. To Martin it felt like one last chance to get back in the game. He was tempted but was quickly talked out of it by his parents who were worried about his head. His interest in joining the team lasted about a week, he says. 

After another application, Martin was yet again waitlisted for teachers’ college. FritoLay had just promoted him to a managerial role, so he considered staying there for good, until getting a surprise call from York University saying a spot had opened up. But as newlyweds, the couple still needed to make money. With his wife working full-time already, Martin went to school during the week and worked Friday nights and the rest of the weekend at FritoLay loading trucks. After graduating, Martin landed a job at Milton Christian School, where he works today. 

Martin says he’s happy in his life and is content coaching his three sons. He’s played pick-up before but says it wasn’t for him, nor does he have the time now for a men’s league with his coaching duties and making sure he attends his kids’ games. Ultimately, he’s not sure when he’ll step away from coaching or the game entirely.

He’s content in his career but from time to time he does wonder what could have been if he’d stuck with hockey. Looking back, Martin thinks there was more he could have done. When he was playing, he’d be on the ice and in the gym for two hours every day, six days a week but still, he thinks he could have worked harder. 

“To this day I wish I could go back in time and [have] somebody tell me that I need to work harder when I was in the OHL,” says Martin. “Because had I, maybe I [would have] played in the NHL.”