Last week was a particularly pleasant one for the Boucher household. On Thursday Dillon had his number 24 playing singlet retired in front of his family and 6000 fans at Vector Arena. That was a special occasion and a fitting tribute for the now retired foundation player.
However, on Saturday Dillon and wife Nikki would have been equally proud that son Jayden picked up his first national title. Jayden was a member of the victorious Hibiscus Coast team that defeated Waikato in the Under 13 Boys Final.
The convincing 88-43 was also the first national title ever won by the Hibiscus Coast Association, the team was coached by Breakers community coach Tony Pompallier.
Jayden has a fair way to go before matching dad’s haul of national titles but safe to bet the ‘old man’ hadn’t won one aged eleven!
I stumbled across a statistical oddity when doing some research recently. Dillon played a total of 220 games for the Sky City Breakers, second only to Paul Henare (250) on the club’s all time list. He played 60 games in his first stint with the club, the remaining 160 in his second spell from 2008 to 2013.
Boucher was forced to miss the home game against Perth Wildcats on February 17, 2010 due to concussion sustained in the previous game against the Melbourne Tigers. That injury brought to an end an unbroken run of 80 appearances.
Here is the odd thing – Dillon went on to make another continuous run of exactly 80 games to conclude his Breakers career. But for a bout of dizziness he would have retired with the club’s all time record for consecutive games played.
Incidentally the record for most consecutive games played for the SKY CITY Breakers is 130. Aaron Olson and Paul Henare who both played every game of the club’s first four seasons jointly hold the record.
LACEY LOWDOWN 