There’s always a fine line to be had when fostering your child’s dreams.

You want to encourage but not inflate; allow them to dream but not falsely fantasize; constructively criticize but not compromise the end goal.

Imagine then the situation Alisha Tomley found herself in less than two years ago when her barely six-foot tall 13-year-old son, Miguel Tomley, told her his main goal moving forward was “to be the best player to ever come out of B.C.”

He doesn’t possess a seven-foot frame like fellow B.C. natives and NBA pros Robert Sacre (Los Angeles Lakers) and Kelly Olynyk (Boston Celtics) nor is he — by all the coaches’ account — the athlete Steve Nash was as a youngster.

But that’s all just hot air for Miguel Tomley.

“I see them all the same,” said Tomley, asked about his end-goal of reaching the NBA like Sacre, Olynyk and Nash. “I guess being taller is an advantage but everyone has to work equally as hard to get there — they all deserve it.

“With that being said, I want to be better than all three of them; I don’t care how they look.”

With big dreams, come some big cojones — and at 15-years-old, Tomley, may just have some of the biggest in B.C. basketball at the moment.

The audacity of Tomley’s pursuit isn’t what has overwhelmed coaches and family members the most — many aspire to reach the highest form of their craft — but rather the level of tenacity and accountability the youngster has held himself to at such a young age is.

“I remember in Grade 8 he came into the gym and he was asking everyone ‘who’s the best player in the school?’” said Par Bains, Tomley’s co-coach at Tamanawis Secondary School (Doug McKenzie is the other). “Everyone said Sukhjot (Bains) — who was in Grade 12 at the time — so he went straight up to him and challenged him to one-on-one in front of everyone. He would always do it.

“Now, don’t get me wrong, he never beat him but the fact that he was willing to do it tells you something about his desire to be the best.”

As a ninth-grader, Tomley burst onto the senior boys basketball scene last year averaging 25 points for the Tamanawis Wildcats.

For any sort of physical limitation Tomley may have yet to experience, he more than made up for it through a sheer force of will and a skill set beyond his years.

Tomley’s fearless approach and confident demeanour may have come as an oddity to those who were seeing the baby-faced guard on the high school scene for the first time last season. But for close onlookers it was exactly that spirit of perseverance and determination that had allowed Tomley to pursue his passion in the first place amid — at times — a tiring childhood.

“His attitude definitely comes from his mom,” said Bains, who noted Miguel’s mentorship role to his 10-year-old brother, Kevin. “She does everything she possibly can to provide for them and she’s at all the games and tournaments.

“I think Miguel really takes that to heart. When you see something like that everyday in your life, you start to think, ‘why can’t I work just as hard at what I want to do?’ ”