Gallimore turning heads at Rainman camp

By Brian Freeman, The Chronicle Herald

Garry Gallimore isn’t going unnoticed this week in Yarmouth.

The 25-year-old from Ottawa, a St. Francis Xavier alumnus, is one of seven players at the Halifax Rainmen training camp on a tryout basis. But he’s been the talk of camp so far, Rainmen president and CEO Andre Levingston said Thursday, and could be closing in on a job with the Premier Basketball League team.

"Every night we get together, the coaches and I, and we discuss players and things that we see or things we don’t like and the one thing that’s constantly coming up is Garry Gallimore," Levingston said.

"The kid is really surprising everybody in camp. . . . He’s playing his butt off. He’s hitting big shots, he’s tough, he gets to the basket. He’s raised everybody’s eyebrows here."

Gallimore, a two-time national defensive player of the year during his four-year tenure with the X-Men that ended in 2007, is one of four former Atlantic university players at the Rainmen camp.

He said he’s been working hard since he got the tryout invitation and believes that preparation is paying off in the gymnasium at the community college in Yarmouth.

"My approach is that everything’s a long shot but I think if you compete every day and work as hard as you possibly can, I don’t think there’s any way that you go unnoticed and I think that’s what’s keeping me in the mix is because I work hard every second I’m on the court."

Levingston said Gallimore’s defensive prowess comes as no surprise. But the six-foot-three guard/forward has also impressed the coaching staff with his abilities at the other end of the court.

"This kid is shooting the daylights out of the basketball and making tough plays and just really moving people around. He’s strong as a bull."

So should he start practising his pose for the team photo?

"It’s too soon to say that," Levingston responded when asked if Gallimore has played his way onto the squad.

"But I’ll tell you this: it’s gonna be extremely hard for that kid not to make this basketball team."

Gallimore, the 2004 AUS rookie of the year, said he’s been trying to improve each time he steps on the court, but he wasn’t ready to assess his chances of earning a roster spot.

"It’s hard to really say at this point. I can only control what I can control," he said Thursday evening from his room in a downtown hotel.

"For me, I’ve just got to keep working and hopefully I’ll get what I came here for, which is a spot on the team."

The Rainmen, who took 15 players to camp, including eight already signed to contracts, will finish up Saturday with an intra-squad game at Par-en-Bas school in nearby Tusket.

The game, which is open to the public, begins at 7 p.m.

Levingston said some players will be released at the end of camp but a final roster of 12 or 13 might not be finalized until after the 2009 Holiday Classic, a set of three exhibition games the Rainmen will host on Dec. 19-21.

He said the team may still bring in additional players to evaluate, either before camp wraps up or during the next few weeks before the Rainmen play their season opener on Jan. 3 on the road against Oklahoma.

Two players who’d been expected at camp — top draft pick Omar Weaver, a guard/forward, and guard Kendel Provet — still hadn’t made it by Thursday, held up by paperwork issues that were preventing their entry into Canada.

"We just can’t wait on them," Levingston said.

"It’s just too important for guys to get in camp, so we’re looking for some more people to come in so we can fill those positions."

He said the club’s priority remains adding another big player who could either play power forward or take over the centre position and enable the six-foot-11 Gordon Malone to slip back into the power forward slot, his natural position.