Kamari Breary

Built for the Moment: Kamari Breary’s Relentless Ascent

From Langley driveways to collegiate hardwoods, the kid who grew up worshipping Kobe and Pierce is now writing his own story at St. Mary’s.

If you trace it back, the story starts in Langley, B.C., with a five-year-old who couldn’t stop dribbling. The basketball was there before the plan was. Before the discipline. Before the reps. Just a kid watching Kobe and Paul Pierce on TV and thinking, yeah, I want that.

By 13, Kamari Breary wasn’t just playing anymore — he was training. The backyard sessions turned into structured workouts, the dream turned into a timeline. And every step since — Team Alberta selection, a Division 1 city title, high-school All-Star nods — was a checkpoint on the long road to the moment that really mattered: signing his Letter of Intent to St. Mary’s.

Ask him about that day and he still smiles like it just happened. “All the hours, the belief, the doubt, the work — it all came together right there,” he says. “That was the dream made real.”

Now, Breary’s chasing something bigger. He talks about discipline and passion the way most people talk about oxygen — necessary and constant. He wants to be the kind of player who changes the standard, who helps take the Lightning from contenders to champions. “When we meet the expectations we’ve set — and then exceed them — that’s when I’ll know it was a successful year,” he says.

Off the court, Kamari’s not exactly taking it easy. He serves as a student representative on the Student Legislative Council, bridging the gap between athletes and the broader campus community, helping plan and run events that make St. Mary’s feel more like a family than a school. It’s classic Breary — if he’s in, he’s all in.

When asked what advice he’d give younger players, his response feels like something that should be stitched on a practice jersey:

“Embrace all of it. The journey is what you remember at the end of the day, not the destination.”

And if you ask how he wants to be remembered? He doesn’t flinch.

“As the hardest worker in whatever I did — and as one of the best to ever do it here, in the ACAC, and in all of Canada.”

That’s not arrogance. That’s belief — the same kind that’s been driving him since he was five.