Former Bobcat Dosado lands Keyano job

Mikee Dosado thought he was home for good when he returned to Montreal from Brandon University.

As it turns out, for the former Bobcat men’s basketball player, home is where the hoop is.

Dosado spent six years as an assistant coach at his other alma mater, Vanier College, and was just named head coach of the Keyano College Huskies of the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference on Thursday.

So he’s moving all the way to Fort McMurray.

“It’s unreal. In my head, I thought I would do it once with Brandon, but here we go again, basketball getting me into trouble, man,” Dosado said with a laugh. “No, no, I’m super excited … I always knew I wanted to be a coach as a full-time job.”

Dosado first played for the Vanier Cheetahs in 2010-11. A couple of years later, he transferred to BU and played for two seasons. He moved to Concordia and played just three games in the 2016-17 campaign before rejoining the Bobcats for 2017-18, averaging 7.4 points per game on a lights-out three-point percentage of 43.2.

He helped BU to a 9-11 record that year, but more importantly, he was laying the foundation for his basketball future.

As every elite sports coach knows, full-time coaching jobs are few and far between. They also know how important it is for a department to trust the person running a program.

Dosado’s reputation aș a Bobcat and a Cheetah mattered. He established a strong relationship with former BU assistant coach Jeremy Wielenga, who moved on to head coach at Keyano and is now the men’s basketball program’s general manager.

While Dosado was an assistant at Vanier, he served as a regional scout for BU coach Gil Cheung, encouraging as many strong college players as he could to head to Brandon.

“Building that relationship from university until now, I honestly feel like I owe them because of how much they’ve given to me. Every time a player wants to go to university, I’m like, ‘Here you go, I know a good place for you,’” Dosado said.

“It gave me a wide scope of what Canadian basketball really is. I got caught up when I was younger with the RSEQ and Quebec and that’s the only thing I knew, and NCAA Division I.

“Getting to know Gil, getting to know Jeremy throughout the years gave me a wider scope of what Canadian basketball really is.”

Cheung was certainly excited to hear from Dosado about his new gig.

“He’ll be a great head coach out there. He does a real good job with his guys, he’s passionate about the game, I was trying to convince him to get out of Quebec and Montreal because there’s only so many jobs out there, and you kind of get pigeonholed out there,” Cheung said.

“We’re really excited, proud of him. There’s only so many coaching jobs out here in college or U Sports.”

Dosado worked as a physical education teacher while coaching at Vanier but had his mind set on coaching as his full-time profession.

So it’s a big change, and the move is bigger than it was as a player, since Dosado now has a girlfriend, child, and dog moving with him.

He starts on May 1.

“I gotta fit that all in with luggage and move in the next two weeks,” Dosado said.

“Brandon had a huge part to do with this. At a time I was unsure of what I wanted to do in life, Brandon and Gil brought me back to reality and made sure I knew my passion, which was basketball.

“I’m super grateful. Without that, I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t have gotten this job.”

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com