Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697646691447.pdf (Bahamas)
Gladstone “Moon” McPhee was fated to be an eternal apologist for Bahamian youth, convinced as he was that the future successes or failure of his Bahamas resided in the degree to which a sense of communal belongership could be successfully inculcated among all Bahamian youth, whether willingly, unwittingly or inadvertently sired, permitting them to be legitimate inheritors of the vision forged by the founding fathers of Bahamian nationhood.
His great fortune was that having been groomed by Roderick Simms, Fr.

Marcian Peters O.S.B., Deacon Lou Adderley, Churchill Tener-Knowles, and Vince Ferguson in particular, five of the most prolific sports administrators in this country’s history.

The benefit from having such didacticians allowed him to exercise a prevailing hand on national sports development, extending from the Golden Era of the 1960’s and 1970’s to the challenging indolence's of the decades which proceeded well into the new millennia.
To the untold benefit of countless young Bahamians, McPhee lived the maxim of metaphysical poet, John Donne, that one has the choice of being com- fortable in one’s own castle or the prisoner of outside opinion.

Such a disposition permitted him to build upon the legacy of his legendary tutors, all of whom, at one time or another, experienced the same kind of character assassination visited upon him.
In the fashion of those who shaped his persona therefore, he possessed the grace to ignore those visionless heretics and to assist in structuring the period commonly referred to as the Golden era of Bahamian sports.

He was the driving force and a founding member of the committee which started Junior League Basketball in The Bahamas in 1962, sponsored by the Cee Bees Sporting Club and organized by Homer Winder (the late).
He was supported by his twin brother, Sidney, and as the 15 years old player/coach of the Big Jay’s Ice Cream Parlor team, he guided his team to the league championship game, losing out to Fred Papa Smith’s Nassau Lakers in that first season of Junior League Basketball.

Other founding clubs were Pinder’s Barber Shop, Little Rock and the Dynamos.
McPhee’s early interests extended to Cricket and Baseball, having been introduced to both disciplines as a member of St. Bernard’s Sporting Club for whom he played Little League Baseball in 1961, and coached by legendary Deacon Lou Adderley (the late).
Baseball moved from Clifford Park to the Queen Elizabeth Sports Center in 1968, resulting in limited facility access, and shortly thereafter causing the collapse of Little League baseball which remained dormant until he aided in its resurrection in the summer of 1971.

He was also to introduce the Pony League Baseball programme upon graduating from Man- kato State University in 1973.
McPhee’s greatest contributions though were in basketball and he became the unquestioned national authority on coaching that sport.

It was not beyond him to travel abroad to high level basketball seminars at his own expense, acquainting himself with the latest international ad- vances in coaching technology.
Attending those clinics also provided him with opportunities to cultivate relationship with many college coaches, which helped him to obtain scholarships for hundreds of Bahamians, through the sport of basketball, lawn tennis, volleyball and baseball.

The country’s oldest and most prestigious event of its kind, the Catholic High School Basketball Invitational was founded by McPhee in 1976 when he relocated to Grand Bahama from New Providence.
He was also a leading member of the committees which established the Hugh Campbell Basketball Invita- tional in 1983 and the Fr.

Marcian Peters National interschool Basketball Invitational in 1984.

Prior to that time, Grand Bahamas was a doormat for Nassau clubs, having never won any kind of national basketball championship.
He took over the presidency of the Grand Bahama Basketball Association in 1978 and under his leadership, Grand Bahama won its first national basketball championship in 1979 when the Island Lobsters defeated the Kentucky Colonels, cham- pions of New Providence.

As coach of Catholic High Crusaders, McPhee won three Hugh Campbell Tournaments, causing Grand Bahama schools to raise their standards if they wanted to compete with Catholic High.
The net result was that Grand Bahama schools came to dominate the Hugh Campbell over the ensuing decades.

The same development occurred when teams from the Grand Bahama Basketball Association rode his coat tails to win national champion- ship after championship, to the degree that the common consensus was that Grand Bahama became the basketball capital of The Bahamas.

His coaching brilliance further evidenced itself in his years as head of the Men’s National Basketball team (1989 to 1992).
Most telling was the results he attained with an undermanned team at the Centro Basque in Panama in 1991, defeating larger South American countries to finish in third place, just one win away from quali- fying for the Pan American Games, the hemispheric qualifier for the 1992 Olympic Games.
One of McPhee’s other significant accomplishments was the establishment of the HOYTES (Helping Our Youths Through Education and Sports) in 1985 when the Bahamas Union of Teachers took industrial action, with Physical Education Teachers and school coaches going on strike, resulting in no afterschool sporting activities in public schools for the next two years.

He was convinced that social tragedy would result with so many young men lingering around after school with nothing constructive to do.
He therefore mounted his own afterschool sports programme and with his confidant, Doug Collins out of New Provi- dence, he initiated HOYTES in New Providence and Grand Bahama, using the medium of basketball to attract the interest of public school student-athletes.

He expanded the programme to Eleuthera, Exuma and Abaco, and the international travel and exposure gained by participants resulted in the production of some of the country’s foremost collegiate and international basketball players.
The monetary value of college scholarships attained by hundreds of Baha- mian student-athletes through the HOYTES programme easily approaches seven figures.

HOYTES remains vibrant today and little is the coincidence that McPhee’s daughter, a product of the programme, occupies a place of prominence among college coaches in the United States.
Another of McPhee’s more salient distinctions was that while others were silent, his was the moral persuasion behind the Port Authority’s grant of land for the development of the Grand Bahama Sports Complex as opposed to construction of a prison.

As the Assistant Director of Sports (1996 to 2009), he was to oversee the development and maintenance of the Complex to its advanced state.
To the great credit of McPhee then, he was comfortable in his own cas- tle, never incarcerated by opinion based on biases and spite.