MELBOURNE, Fla. – There have been many players who have captured the imagination of Florida Tech men's basketball fans over the decades, whether at the old Percy Hedgecock Gymnasium or these days at the Clemente Center but few have been talked about in such regard to this day as the Canadian quintet of Robert Sewell, Astley Smith, Mike Smith, Peter Walcott and Dwight Walton.
Together, the "Maple Leaf Five" sparked the most successful era in program history between 1988-1995: three 20-win seasons, two NCAA Tournament appearances (the first in program history, along with a first ever tournament win), a first ever Sunshine State Conference regular season championship and a first ever SSC Tournament final appearance.
Prior to their arrival in Melbourne in the fall of 1987, the Panthers had gone eight consecutive seasons without a winning record and had never won more than four games in conference play since joining the SSC in 1981.
Walton, a future Olympian with the Canadian national team, transferred to Florida Tech after one season at Siena. By rule he would have to sit out the 1987-88 season before he began his three seasons in the Crimson and Gray. However, then Panther head coach Tom Folliard Sr. figured that there had to be more talent where Dwight came from, so he went to his prized transfer for confirmation.
"Coach Folliard asked me if there were any other players from Montreal like me and I said 'Man, there's plenty of us at home like me!" said Walton. "The funny story is he came to Montreal, there were about 20 guys in the gym, and he was the only coach there. We placed a chair for him at mid-court on the sideline, he crossed his legs and watched 20 players go at it. He asked me to come over and he said 'Dwight, I like him, him and him' and those guys were the Smith brothers and Garfield Glasgow."
As Walton red-shirted, the Panthers' ascent began during the 1987-88 campaign. The team, led by future Florida Tech Hall of Famers Tom Folliard Jr. and Davon Kelly, won 18 games, their most in over a decade and recording a winning record in conference play for the first time. Their second-place finish in the SSC earned them a bye into the conference semifinals, a round they had never been to before. Astley Smith's 13 points per game were good enough to earn him a spot on the conference's All-Freshman team and an All-SSC Honorable Mention nod as well.
It was during that elevating season of 1987-88, that Folliard Sr. had been recruiting Astley's younger brother, Mike, a six-foot-four forward. His first experience with Florida Tech and the environment it would provide came in February 1988 during his recruiting visit as he watched the Panthers defeat Tampa for the first time in program history, 68-63.
"When we were playing at Dawson (my prep school), we had rivalries in Montreal and gyms were packed," said Smith. "However, the game I went to, just to see how packed the gym was and with all the fraternities and everybody that was there, I was sold right away. Not just because my brother and Dwight were there, but also the atmosphere at the school at the time, I thought 'yeah, this is where I want to be'."
Folliard Sr. and his staff knew they were going to need extra help in the post replacing the departing Ron Harris, so they hoped that Canada could provide that too. Enter, six-foot-four bruiser Robert Sewell.
"We have a tournament here in Montreal called the Martin Luther King Tournament, which we have every summer, it's one of the best summer tournaments in Canada," Walton recalled "Coach Folliard's son Tommy and a bunch of guys from Florida came up for the tournament.."
"Me and John Cooper drove up from Boston to the tournament," Folliard Jr. remembers. "We were going to play with Mikey, Astley, Dwight, Garfield and we had never met Robert. So, we went to a gym and played three-on-three just before the tournament started and Robert was great.
"Towards the end, he took a shot from the top of the key, it hit the back rim, he went in, jumped off two feet and caught it and dunked on everybody. It was such a tremendous dunk that we just quit. I went to a payphone, called my father and said, 'Just give this guy a scholarship, you don't need to see him, you don't need to talk to him, I did all that for you."
Walton entered the fold for the Panthers in the 1988-89 season and it was easy to see right away just what a gift he would be for the program. Walton earned Third Team All-America honors by the NABC, the first All-American in program history, as well as First Team All-SSC honors by averaging 19.1 points and 10.3 rebounds per game. Together with Kelly, the Smith brothers, Sewell and point guard Ray Paprocky, the rest of the SSC found out that Florida Tech was now very much for real.
The peak of the program's history may have come on December 29 and 30, 1988 when Hedgecock Gym hosted the Florida Today/McDonell Douglas Holiday Classic, an event that featured three Division I schools.
The first evening's action saw the Panthers cruise to a 106-87 victory over a John Calipari-led Massachusetts team. After 742 career wins, six Final Four trips and a national championship at the collegiate level along with a head coaching stint in the NBA, that Thursday night in Melbourne is still firmly entrenched in the legendary coach's memory.
"Years later, I'm at an NABC Foundation event and I'm one table over from where Calipari is," Folliard Jr. recalls. "I went over to his table, I said 'Hey coach, nice to meet you, I don't know if you remember me, but I went to Florida Tech and you guys came here and I don't know if you remember but we beat you'. He said 'Do I remember? You guys had all those Canadians!"
One night later, the Panthers took on Boston College from the Big East Conference, a league that was at its peak as the best conference in all of college basketball. The Eagles had reached the semifinals of the NIT the season prior and featured Dana Barros, an All-Big East sharpshooter who would go on to be an All-Star during a 14-year career in the NBA. Guarding Barros had been a challenge for teams at college basketball's highest level, so how would Folliard Sr. approach stopping someone who had scored 29 points against the Panthers the season before?
"He put his son Kevin, who's not the fastest guy or the tallest guy, on him," recalls Mike Smith "He basically said 'no matter who we put on Dana Barros, he's going to drop 30 points on us, right?' and the goal is for nobody else to score in double digits."
That's exactly what happened as Barros got his but the Eagles needed his prolific scoring just to keep them in the game against the Panthers at a frenzied Hedgecock Gym.
Ultimately, the game would be decided in the final seconds when Kelly sunk a pair of free throws to clinch the 77-75 victory.
While the victory over BC is what endures, the biggest accomplishment of the 1988-89 season still lay ahead. The Panthers finished the regular season at 22-6 and reached the NCAA Division II Tournament for the first time in program history. Mike Smith earned SSC Freshman of The Year honors, while Sewell joined him on the All-Freshman Team.
College athletes are used to being stopped around campus to discuss the great games they had but for the "Maple Leaf Five", that recognition continued even as they went out and about in Melbourne.
"Everybody knew you going into Albertson's and the stock guys are saying 'Great game last night!', they knew your stats," said Mike Smith. "I had never experienced that!"
One season like that would be enough to be talked about for years at many programs but it turned out that 1988-89 was a springboard for what was to come the following season. The Panthers went 25-2 during the regular season in 1989-90, reaching as high as the No. 3 ranking in the country at one point. Their lone loss at home came to Division I Murray State, who would take part in March Madness that season. More importantly, their 11-1 record in conference play gave them a share of the Sunshine State Conference regular season championship with Tampa. It was the first time that Florida Tech had scaled the SSC mountain, and only the 2011-12 squad have joined the 1989-90 team on the men's side in earning that achievement.
Walton and Astley Smith were named First Team All- SSC, while Kelly was named to the Second Team and Folliard Sr. was named SSC Co-Coach of The Year. Walton also earned a second consecutive NABC Third Team All-American honor.
The Panthers again returned to the NCAA Division II Tournament, earning their first ever win by defeating Norfolk State, 73-63, in the South Atlantic regional semifinal. Florida Tech would then fall in the Sweet 16 to Morehouse, 81-77.
Walton and the Smith brothers ran it back one more time in 1990-91 and so very nearly made it three consecutive trips to the Big Dance. A 20-5 regular season was led by Walton's 15.8 points and 8.7 rebounds per game, which earned him a third consecutive First Team All-SSC honor. His Panther career concluded with a third consecutive NABC All-American honor, this time being named to the Second Team. He remains the only Panther to have multiple All-American awards. Astley Smith made the All-SSC Second Team, earning him All-conference honors all four seasons in Melbourne, while his brother Mike garnered Honorable Mention.
The Panthers would also reach the Sunshine State Conference Tournament Final for the first time with an upset win over the SSC's regular season champions Rollins on the Tars' home floor in Winter Park. However, they would fall in the final to Florida Southern, 77-66, which ultimately prevented them from making another return trip to the Big Dance.
Plenty of changes were to come after the 1990-91 season. Walton and the Smith brothers graduated while Tom Folliard Sr. retired from coaching. Taking over for him would be Andy Russo, who experienced success coaching at the Division I level with Louisiana Tech and Washington. He too would get some help from the North: enter Peter Walcott, a dynamic six-foot guard from Montreal. From his first day in Melbourne, Peter knew he had a reputation to uphold.
"When I got down there, it was like' Oh, you're the new Canadian? Are you as good as Dwight, Mikey and Astley?' So, the lineage was there and for me, it was like 'Okay, I have to continue this lineage," said Walcott.
While the Panthers never quite matched the competitive highs of the prior seasons, that certainly was not because of Walcott. During a four-year career in which he never missed a game, Walcott averaged 15.6 points, 2.8 rebounds 3.3 assists and 2.0 steals per game. After winning Sunshine State Conference Freshman of The Year following the 1991-92 season, Walcott would be named First Team All-SSC in each of the next three seasons. Walcott and Walton remain the only Panthers to have earned First Team honors three times.
Ask anyone who had the chance to watch #42 at Hedgecock Gym and they'll tell you about a player who put on an aerial show that few have matched since, and a player who came through in the big moments time and again.
As the years moved on, the Maple Leaf Five's legacy became more recognized. Walton would be inducted into the Florida Tech Sports Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Sunshine State Conference Hall of Fame a decade later. He remains the only Panther men's basketball player to have been bestowed that honor from the league. The 1989-90 team was inducted into the Florida Tech Sports Hall of Fame in 2001. A visibly moved Walcott would join them in February of 2020.
The fingerprints of the Maple Leaf Five are all over the Panther men's basketball record books to this day. A look through the career top 10 list of several statistical categories will find the names of Sewell, Astley Smith, Walcott and Walton.
Beyond the wins, losses, honors and statistics, the Maple Leaf Five's greatest impact was sparking a love for Panther basketball across not just campus but Brevard County that had been dormant since the program's early days. That passion could be seen and heard at Hedgecock Gym throughout the 90s and helped play a part in Florida Tech's contention throughout the decade.
"That really was the best thing we had going for us," said Russo, who led the Panthers to 125 victories between 1991-1999. "We had a packed house pretty much every night. It wasn't a very big place, but it was packed. It was a great time with a lot of support from the community."
"I remember the fire department turning people away from the gym for a game against Tampa on a Saturday afternoon just for crowd control purposes," said Walton.
"It was like the fans were passing the ball to me because that's how close they were on the floor," Walcott remembers.
"I can't remember me ever having a bad home game," said Astley Smith, "That's how much I got up for home games because of the crowds. Back then, after you scored the first basket, they threw confetti and stuff on the court. So every home game, the first time I touched the ball, no matter where I got it, I was shooting!"
The Canadian influence at Florida Tech wasn't just limited to the Maple Leaf Five. Quebec's Christine Keenan (Ferron), a SSC Hall of Famer, played a massive role in the transformation of the Panther women's basketball team from fledgling program in its third season when she arrived into a legitimate national power when she graduated in 1993. Garfield Glasgow, a starting center during the 1987-88 and 88-89 seasons, also hailed from Montreal. Sherman Hamilton of Toronto would earn SSC Freshman of The Year in 1992-93 before transferring to Division I VCU. Montreal's Adrian Benjamin played alongside Walcott in the mid-1990s as the Panthers remained a contender in the SSC.
Three decades later, the lessons that the Maple Leaf Five learned during their time at Florida Tech still very much resonate with them today in different lines of work.
"I'm managing a health center, coordinating everybody from our nurses, security to transportation," said Mike Smith. "One of the things Coach Folliard really taught us to do was adapt to situations. I look back at when we played Boston College and his philosophy that allowed us to beat them. That was his approach: don't fight the inevitable, recognize what you can control and take care of that. I look at that a lot in life and recognize what I can control or change and focus on that."
"It's all about the defensive intensity, the raw passion, the love of the game that Coach Folliard brought to us," said Walton, who today serves as an assistant coach at Concordia University in Montreal. "He was strict, but he was also a player's coach at the same time. He understood he had something special brewing. The overall attention to detail, he allowed his players to play but also wanted certain things from you. As a coach, you go with the experience of that."
"What my time at Florida Tech strengthened in me was that the work you put in on your own is what's going to push you forward," said Walcott, now a data processor for the Lester B. Pearson School Board in Quebec. "I knew at some point I had to be my own driving force. Our program enabled me to grow that inner strength."
Attempts to reach Sewell, currently a preacher in Australia, for this feature were unsuccessful.
It wasn't just the lessons on the court that stuck with the players, life on campus helped them expand their world as well.
"At Florida Tech, our bubble, our world, it was one family," Walcott reflected.
"The biggest thing anyone can learn playing a team sport and going to a university outside of your city is bridging the gap," said Astley Smith, who currently works in the housekeeping department at Lakeshore General Hospital just outside Montreal. "We had guys from Africa and Yugoslavia on our team. So, I got to meet and experience a lot of people at F.I.T from all over the world. Depending on the job, you're going to meet people from all walks of life, so Florida Tech helped give me a head start with that."
The bonds built through hard work and success remain as strong as ever.
"We've done reunions in Virginia Beach, Martha's Vineyard, New Hampshire and my house. I've also gone to Canada to see them a few times." said Folliard Jr., who is now retired after a successful business career that saw him serve as the CEO of CarMax. "We were going to do another reunion this year but COVID prevented that."
"Because of our success and how we had genuine respect and love for one another, our friendships last through today," said Walton. "I'm on a group chat with most of my teammates from that era."
Whatever peaks and memories lie ahead for Florida Tech basketball, it will have been made possible through the efforts of the Maple Leaf Five, a core that remain an undeniable part of Panther athletics history.
