Aaron Rhooms, built on belief and family bond, looks to make history with TMU at U Sports Final 8

Her first real foray into the kitchen was back when she was barely a teenager. Zoë Rhooms knew the athlete in the family had a sweet tooth and she always looked out for her big brother, Aaron. When he was nine, Aaron told Zoë and their parents that when he grew up, he was going to be the next Batman. Then a few weeks later, Aaron came home from school and declared to everyone he had changed career paths — a basketball player he’d be.

No matter which superhero costume he chose to wear, by high school Aaron Rhooms had himself a guilty pleasure: those warm, homemade, chocolate chip cookies Zoë would make. And every now and again in those days, whether it was to celebrate or maybe sensing he could use a pick-me-up, Zoë would put on an apron, follow instructions out of a cookbook line by line, and whip up the goods. 

Aaron kept eating them and Zoë kept baking them. And as the years went on, with her brother appreciating tweaks to the recipe, Zoë now has her own method to making the best chocolate chip cookies in the neighbourhood. Aaron raves that his sister is on her way to becoming a Michelin-star chef. 

But Zoë Rhooms isn’t just an incredible cook. 

“She’s been the glue for our family,” Marcia Rhooms says of her 19-year-old daughter. 

On Wednesday evening, Aaron Rhooms will likely hear his name called as the national player of the year in U Sports men’s basketball. As deserving as it is for the season he’s had, in a lot of ways it is the reward for one of the all-time great careers in Canadian university hoops. 

Rhooms has been the catalyst to the turnaround of Toronto Metropolitan University’s (TMU) program and becoming a threat to win a national championship this week. He is on his way to playing professionally in the fall, likely overseas. And at a time where so many top-level Canadian student-athletes are looking for greener pastures south of the border — and the NIL money that can come with it — Aaron has stayed put.

Just like Zoë did five years ago, when she was only 14. 

Zoë made the decision then that she would be home schooled when tragedy hit the family. When their father, Roland, died suddenly, a seismic void for Marcia and her children.

“I’m just so grateful for her,” Aaron says.

As Marcia puts it, Zoe “took on more adult roles as a child and not because I wanted it, but because of the sheer volume of things we had to deal with. She picked up the slack. 

“That allowed Aaron the freedom to be able to still go to school and practice, and put more time in the gym. I don’t know where we would be, or where Aaron would be, without Zoë.”

The clock had stopped with four seconds remaining in the regular-season finale, the game tied at 79. It was Feb. 15, senior’s night at TMU, and while there had been pomp and circumstance at the beginning of the evening to celebrate the team’s graduating players, by late in the night, TMU’s hopes for a real post-season run would come down to this. The BOLD needed this one against Lakehead. A win would clinch a bye through the opening round of the gantlet known as the OUA playoffs and presented the ideal path out of Ontario to reach the U Sports Final 8 — Canada’s version of March Madness. 

TMU had possession in its frontcourt, ready to inbound. Everyone in the gym knew where the ball was headed when 6-foot-4 sophomore Kevin Toth stood to the left of the scorer’s table and lifted the ball into the air. 

In their customary seats, a wicker basket between the two of them, Marcia and Zoë watched Batman come to life. Aaron cut across the key, crouched to accept the entry pass on the bounce, then spun around, took one dribble and as he got knocked down, drilled a baseline jumper at the horn to give TMU the victory. 

Those four seconds encapsulated the five years Aaron Rhooms has put together with the BOLD. The program that has become his, in an instant bypassed having to play a first round postseason game. The coaches that challenged him to be a leader watched four teammates help Rhooms up off the deck and soak in the moment with him. 

Up in the seats, Marcia and Zoë hugged and celebrated. 

“I couldn’t even cry,” Marcia would later say. “I was just so overwhelmed with admiration.” 

The mission to allow Rhooms, now 23, to find ways to score and absolutely take over games hit its crescendo last month. Two weeks before senior’s night, when TMU couldn’t buy a bucket against Ontario Tech for much of the first half, Rhooms just looked around in the huddle during a timeout and gave the guys a nod, as if to say, ‘I’ve got this.’ Then came a 38-point masterpiece, capped off by yet another buzzer beater from the corner pocket to win it at the end of regulation.

Marcia and Zoë later came down with five dozen homemade cookies to share with the players, staff and coaches in celebration. “A special treat for us,” Marcia said. Which is what Aaron has been to the program from the jump.

“He can score in the post, He can score, from the three-point line, he can put it on the floor and just flat out score from anywhere,” says BOLD head coach Dave DeAveiro, who landed Rhooms at TMU when they both arrived at the downtown Toronto campus five years ago. “To find a kid who can score like that is really, really hard to find, right? And you probably ask most coaches and they’ll tell you their best scores are probably not their best defensive players either.”

Batman is a unicorn. Does it all. The top player in Ontario both last season and in this one, an All-Canadian to boot. Being such an effective two-way player has gotten him a taste of suiting up in a national team jersey. And while from the beginning of his time at TMU, Rhooms has been impactful, it’s the growth in his five years on campus that has been more impressive. 

Taffe Charles is the head coach at Carleton, a basketball program that is the gold standard for U Sports basketball. He remembers trying to recruit a raw kid out of prep school during the COVID lockdown. That kid has become such an athletic man, with a strong lower-half. Carleton’s coach barely recognizes him. There’s a good 30 more pounds of muscle on that 6-foot-6 frame now than when Charles first met him. The Ravens have to game-plan and prepare for such a physical load when facing Rhooms. 

He’s not afraid of the moment and that’s what makes him special.– TMU coach Dave

“If he gets to his right hand, he is very hard to stop,” says Charles. “He shoots it so well now you have to get up on him and that allows him to get to his right hand.” And even still, the muscle Rhooms has put on makes him a match-up nightmare. 

“He’s powerful,” says Charles. “He lifts (weights) to be strong, not to look good.”

Rhooms was great when it mattered most. In the OUA semifinal last week against Brock, with a trip to the nationals on the line, he made the most meaningful game of his career his signature performance. Not only did Rhooms drop 27 to cement TMU’s place in the Final 8 bracket, but he went on a tear where he scored 15 straight points and had a sellout home crowd rocking to the show. 

“He’s not afraid of the moment and that’s what makes him special,” says DeAveiro. “But more than that, Aaron comes in and he tries every day. And that’s all I can ask of him.” 

It’s what Marcia wanted of her young son way back when, right around the time he was talking about being both Batman and baller. Aaron had been a self-starter from the beginning. He taught himself how to swim. How to ride his bike. How to tie his own shoes. 

“As parents, we were there, just in case he needed us,” Marcia says. She just told her boy to give his best at whatever he was doing, because that is all that mattered to her.

Those were among the values Marcia and Roland Rhooms passed along to their two children, growing up in Mississauga, about 40 km from the old Maple Leaf Gardens, now TMU’S athletic centre, where Aaron has now become one of the most prolific scorers in the history of Canadian university basketball. 

Aaron’s jersey number, 12, is an homage to his pops. Roland played high school ball back in the day. The old heads will tell you Roland Rhooms was a baller in his era. While dad coached at least one of his son’s youth teams growing up, basketball was just like everything else Aaron went after: all driven by his want-to. His parents couldn’t help but notice that in ninth, tenth, even eleventh grades, rarely would their son go out with his friends at night. It got to the point where Marcia would ask him if he was sure he didn’t want to go have fun. 

And the answer was often a pretty hard no. Gotta finish homework. Gotta get some rest. Gotta be ready for basketball practice first thing in the morning. Marcia remembers the clarity that attitude brought.

“When you see your kid doing this when he’s 14, 15, 16 years old, I’m thinking, ‘maybe there’s something here.’”

Maybe there was, but you never really know at that age. Besides, there were expectations his parents established in the house. As Christians, mom and dad would tell their kids that Christian behaviour “means you treat people with respect. You hold the door for someone. If you see someone in need, help them if you can.”

As children it was instilled into Aaron and Zoë to carry themselves in a way that tells the world how they want to be treated. 

In a half-hour conversation with his mother, Marcia does not once bring up a moment from Aaron’s basketball career or any snapshot of his greatness on the floor. Instead, mom is most proud of this: “I’ve never seen him yell at people. He doesn’t belittle people. He’s a good-hearted person. He wants the best for everybody around him.”

By the time Greg Angelakos arrived on TMU’s campus to suit up for the BOLD, he was well aware of the growing legend that was Aaron Rhooms at the time — the national rookie of the year who had played three different positions over three different seasons and was drafted by two different franchises in the CEBL. It was August of 2023, just before classes were to start and Angelakos was checking into residence as a first-year student when he was added to the team’s group chat. As a rookie, Greg knew he’d be redshirting, but when the message popped up that the team would be having an informal scrimmage, he had to see what was up. 

Rhooms remembers it this way: “Greg took me on full-court right away. And I’ll tell you, nobody else in that run did that. And there were varying ages, varying talents in that gym that day, and he was the only one that came to challenge me. I think he took it as personal, trying to shut me down, which I respected.”

Angelakos describes the encounter differently: “I was 18. Maybe 160 pounds soaking wet. I think I just kind of guarded Aaron in the first run we ever did. And man, did he whoop my ass.”

However it shook down, it created a bond between the two of them. Rhooms encouraged Angelakos during that freshman season when he was so down because he wasn’t playing; pushed him to stick around the gym so the two of them could put up shots after practice. Rhooms made sure Angelakos was eating, checked up on his homework and study hall. 

“The amount of care and the effort that he put in, to make sure I was good, like on a day-to-day basis, meant everything,” Angelakos says. “Without that kind of light at the end of the tunnel? Without that guiding voice of someone that has done it? I don’t know what would have happened.”

And it’s not just Angelakos. Marcia and Zoë often come to games with home-cooked meals — flavoured chicken, not too spicy; a couple of greens, and then who knows what else. Aaron often makes sure the guys who aren’t from the GTA get first dibs at the grubs. Two of Marcia’s favourites are Maxime Louis-Jean, who is from Montreal, and Aidan Wilson out of Burnaby, B.C. 

“We have a lot to give thanks to,” Marcia says. “It’s been five years. All the players. All the coaches. The way I know how to say thank you, the way I show my love for people is through cooking. So that’s what I’m going to do.”

A few days before senior’s night, Aaron sits next to a visitor on the bench inside the gym after a Monday practice. He’s reflecting on these past five years. The teammates. The moments. The growth. The adversity. The unknowns. 

And he knows the question is coming. Rhooms looks over, and begins to answer it before it was about to be asked: “Why did I stay? I stayed because it’s home here.”

Why did I stay? I stayed because it’s home here.– Aaron Rhooms on why he plays at TMU

Home has never been the same for the Rhooms family since St. Patrick’s Day, 2020. It began as any other. Roland went off to work, where he was the director of programs and services at Skills for Change, an organization helping underserved individuals and newcomers to Canada. Roland was chatting with colleagues about what they were going to have for lunch, and then headed into a stairwell. About 10 minutes later, someone started screaming from that area. Roland was slumped over, dead of a pulmonary embolism. He was 53. 

It was as stunning as it was devastating. Roland left behind two teenage children and a wife, dealing with the grief of losing a father and husband. And then days later, the world shut down as COVID swept the planet. There was no outlet for Aaron to play organized basketball to get away. Marcia was finding ways to navigate this new life, while mourning, and still having to keep the family together. 

Somehow, Aaron did not become bitter. Did not blame anybody.

Somehow, Zoë, all of 14, put her hand up and made the decision then to help the family get through it. Supporting Marcia. Somehow, it was ninth-grader Zoë that urged her brother and mom to keep going, and kept the family afloat. It was Zoë who organized Aaron’s schedules when school and sports returned. It was Zoë reminding her mom and brother of what needed to be done that day. That night. That week. It was then that Zoë learned how to cook. Baked those chocolate chip cookies. Make a mac-and-cheese dish that Aaron insists will make your mouth water.

Through the tragedy and the trauma, it was the three of them. Together. At home. And when it was time to go to university, and TMU became the choice, Aaron opted not to live downtown and get the full university experience. All those values his parents had taught him way back when? They remain. He commutes 90 minutes each way, daily from Mississauga. To class, to practice, to games, and not much in-between. Rhooms will graduate with a degree in business management at the end of this semester.

Home is under the roof with Marcia and Zoë, but it’s also with the basketball program. 

“I found a home where I’m surrounded by guys that care for me, that support me, that I’ve got love for, and it’s where I’ve grown up, really,” Aaron says. “To play in front of my mom and sister, to play in front of family, surrounded by people that have invested so many resources into me, it only feels right to see this thing through.”

The self-starter has fulfilled both missions the nine-year-old set out for himself. Rhooms has become TMU’s Batman on the floor. The accolades matched the production, beginning as a rookie, and the attention followed. Rhooms has had opportunities to transfer to a number of NCAA Division I schools that were calling. No shortage of lucrative offers that would have allowed him to cash in. And he turned them down to stay at TMU. 

“Everything that I’ve heard is that everyone wants to make their money playing this game. But I love this game. I can’t put a dollar amount on the love that I have for basketball,” Rhooms says. “So, it’s like I could go accept the bag and go (to the NCAA). But am I gonna play? You know what I mean? And that’s my thing. I really love to play the game. No money involved.

“So, like, I stay in U Sports, I may not get all of my scholarship covered, but I know I’m going to play, and I know I’m going to do what I love. And that’s important to me.”

It is a throwback mindset to a time in collegiate athletics that doesn’t exist anymore. Rhooms will look you in the eye and says he wants “to give back to the program that has given me so much,” and he means it. 

“I’m so proud of him. He’s such an inspiration, even to me,” Marcia says. “Sometimes, I’ve wanted to quit. And I think about Aaron. And sometimes he’s dog tired and his body hurts. But he still gets up and goes to practice. And he’s still 100 per cent in.”

This week is the ultimate chance to cement himself in the university’s history and elevate TMU into rarified air at the Canadian championships. The school has never won a national title in men’s basketball before. Then again, they’ve never had Batman either. 

The final step awaits in Calgary. Where the payoff this week can be more than just those warm, chocolate chip cookies.