Long before he captained the Canadian team at the 1956 Summer Olympics, Bob Burtwell was an active and well-respected basketball player in the province of British Columbia. After earning accolades in his high school days, Burtwell played at the collegiate level for the University of British Columbia and won five national championships with the Vancouver Clover Leafs. His first major international competition was the 1954 FIBA World Championships, where he and the Canadian team were ranked 7th among 8 teams. At the Olympic tournament in 1956, the Canadians finished 9th in a field of 15 nations and, three years later, finished 12th among 13 countries at the 1959 World Championships, in which Burtwell participated as a player-trainer. He retired from international play in 1960 and began coaching the Vancouver Dee-Cees, as well as maintaining a presence as a competitor in British Columbia’s Senior “B” League. He continued coaching basketball throughout the 1960s and remained active athletically, in both basketball and racquetball, until he was nearly 70. He was inducted into the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame in 1993 as a member of the 1947-1948 Clover Leafs, which had earned him the third of his five national championships.
Canada