Located on the shores of Deer Lake in western Newfoundland, lies the picturesque town of Deer Lake. The east shore of the lake was first settled in 1867 by a Cape Breton Island family who began an operation to cut pine trees. The site was named Nicholsville and has expanded with the building of the NL railway in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1923 Deer Lake was selected as the site of a power plant to support a pulp and paper mill at nearby Corner Brook. Incorporated as a town in 1950, Deer Lake had a population of 4000 people. In 1955, a school built in Deer Lake burned down in 1973. The replacement school renamed as Elwood (a combination of the town's two major industries, electrical power and logging) opened in 1975. The students at the new Elwood High quickly meshed with each other and became Lakers!
Jim Feltham – The Coach K of Newfoundland and Labrador
Inducted into the Newfoundland and Labrador Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003, the name Jim Feltham has been synonymous with winning. For fifty years Jim has been a fixture on the NL basketball scene coaching the Deer Lake Lakers and having also spent time in Pond Inlet, Nunavut coaching. Jim first started coaching basketball in 1964 in Lewisporte during his first teaching position. Next up for him was a return to university to get his education degree before moving back to Deer Lake in 1969 to begin his teaching career. This was also the first year he coached and let’s just say that worked out well for Jim and his future Lakers!
He then spent two years at Bowness High School in Calgary, where he coached the Grade 9 team. After his time in Calgary was up he returned to Deer Lake to teach English at the high school, and in 1973 started coaching the Lakers again. For a time, he even coached both the boys’ and girls’ teams, and once attended 19 tournaments in one year!!! That year he did 2 practices a day 3 times a week, won 2 silvers in 3A in consecutive weekends, a 3-point loss in Grand Falls in the girl’s championship game and a 2-point loss in Trepassey in the boys. He even coached his own daughters, Miriam Sheppard and Sarah Feltham over the years. Jim retired in 1997, but for the next 10 years travelled to Alberta, Manitoba, Nunavut and Labrador to teach/coach. He returned to Deer Lake for good in 2009 usu and started coaching the Lakers again. Jim has had so many unique adventures and I am excited to share them with you!
The Gym
The gym in the new Elwood school was 90' by 60' instead of 100' by 80' engineers thought it would be. The gym had bleachers, but this made the playing floor about 50' wide, bare FIBA minimum. The surface was a new rubberized synthetic, green with yellow and red and white markings, about 1/4-inch-thick and laid directly on concrete probably…the most unforgiving floor possible!
The Atmosphere at Elwood HIgh
Jim also said one of the major issues for them was the gym had no acoustic waffling and the usual 400 fans per game sounded like a thousand. They could put about 150 fans in the bleachers and the rest stood around the court, 2 deep. The fan support was always tremendous in Deer Lake. Routinely, they had to lock dozens of fans out when the game reached capacity dictated by fire regulations. On one memorable occasion, Elwood vs Booth Memorial in the championship game, 2 parents came late. In order to get them in, our principal and vice-principal had to use hockey sticks across the door to prevent frustrated spectators outside from storming the gym. Players from many St. John's teams, especially Booth Memorial (since closed), who played in the Elwood Invitational like to reminisce about the atmosphere, the appropriate WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE at top volume, the maniacal student body in a frenzy, and the gym actually vibrating. Wow….
Over the Years
In the 1993 3A championship the boy’s won by 25 plus. His girls lost by 7 in his daughter's and Sandi Blundon’s (she goes by Stewart these days) last year. The sharp shooting Blundon who went on to play Varsity basketball with MUN and her talented team just missed out on a gold medal that year! The next year he coached the Lakers to a 3A championship in Gander. All told, Jim has 2 silvers in girls 3A, 1 gold in boys 3A, and 5 silvers in boys 4A. Of those silvers in 4A, 3 were as Elwood being 3A in student population but choosing to play up to 4A. In those years SSNL rules (as today) allowed a team to decide on competition level in November of the school year. They would choose our team in October and evaluate our level. If they felt they could compete at 4A, they would have a confidential team vote on the decision. Over the years Jim can remember only ONE player voting for 3A. Jim took a lot of criticism for choosing to compete at 4A when we were the favorites to win 3A. But he has always wanted to compete at the highest possible level rather than going for the easier win. Bravo!!
Basketball in the High Arctic: The Pond Inlet Experiences in Nunuvut
Jim also taught school in Pond Inlet, Nunavut for 6 years. His first two years were spent coaching the boys at Nasivvik High School. With an amazing coach and determined teams, they won the Nunavut Territorial Championship, beating the capital city Iqualuit both times. That is a big deal and Jim was pretty popular with that kind of success! After that first win, he was named coach of Team Nunavut in the Arctic winter Games in 2004. Well done!
Jim’s experience with Team Nunavut in the Arctic Winter Games was simply amazing. The team's nucleus was 6 of his Navsivvik HS players plus individuals across Nunavut. Somehow, he convinced Sport Nunavut to charter a 50-passenger prop plane and partnered with 2 others sports teams from Iqaluit to fly to Deer Lake and St. John's to play exhibition games…how exciting for the students from Nunavut! For many of the kids it was their first time outside of Nunavut.
At the Arctic Winter Games 2004 in Fort MacMurray, while not competitive with Northern Alberta, Alaska, NWT, Yukon, etc., his players were the crowd favorites. It didn't hurt that his old students from Deer Lake packed the gym to see their old coach in action again! Their final game was against a team from the province of Mogadan, Northern Russia. They had only 7 players and were extremely rough. Midway through the 2nd half they were up by 30 and they were down to 3 players. Naturally, the crowd cheered every positive move Russia made. He called a timeout to tell the boys they were now the bad guys playing 5 on 3 and to not run up the score. The team captain suggested they offer to play 3 on 3? First Jim said "That's not allowed in the rules ", but then he went to the refs and said "I've got 7 players with severe stomach cramps, so we can only put 3 on the floor. Strangely enough, it seems to pass from player to player so I CAN substitute." When my 3 guys ran out to play their 3, the crowd gave us a standing ovation and the Russian coach ran over and gave me a bear hug and kissed my cheeks, most embarrassing moment in basketball!! The team was awarded a special sportsmanship medal and with Team Nunavut winning the overall Sportsmanship Award for the tournament!
Provincial Coaching Experiences with NLBA
Jim’s only experience coaching Team NL was in the summer of 1991 at the Eastern Canadian Basketball Championships in Fredericton, NB. He usually finished his coaching in March when the HS provincials were over and had little interest in the provincial scene. A group of Grade 9 boys ked him to coach them in the Grade 9 NLBA West Provincials. Four of them were in his homeroom so I agreed. They won that tournament, our closest game being 17 versus Xavier, the tiny Catholic school in Deer Lake.
They brought the boys to Deer Lake for a week's training camp and drove to Fredericton the Monday before the tournament they played an exhibition game at the tournament at the Black Kat gym. They beat them by 2. Then they had to play NS 90 minutes later. Coached by Doug Partridge used 10 players, Deer Lake used 5 and Jim maintains that his biggest weakness as a coach was not making better use of his bench. They led by 7 at the half, down 3 at the third quarter, and lost by 11. They had all beaten PEI, so we were all 1 win, 1 loss, and NL was relegated to the bronze medal game on point spread which they won easily.
The next 3A provincial (1994) was in Gander/Glenwood, 12 teams. They had lost Saj Joseph to an ACL injury but still had a very strong team, lead by team captain Lanny Wheeler, point guard. Our bad luck in losing Saj was offset by Brian Barker's OHL Barrie Colts being eliminated from the OHL playoffs. It was Brian who hit the final 3 pointer for the Lakers to win the 3A provincials vs St Francis of Carbonear by 1. It was such an exciting game!!
The next year, with Saj back, despite being 3A in population, they moved up to 4A. They lost to Brother Rice by 6 in the championship game. They had played earlier in the year in the Coal Bowl, a National Invitational 10 team tournament in New Waterford, NS. We went 3 and 1, despite playing huge schools from Ontario, 9 points being our biggest loss. Trevor White and Saj Joseph went first and second in tournament scoring. Saj went on to play 5 years at Acadia and remains their all-time leader in assists.
Memorable Player Moments
He coached girls along with the boys for 5 years, beginning with his older daughter Miriam in Grade 10. His younger daughter Sarah and Sandi Blundon were in Grade 8 and played with the SR team. Sandi was by far and away the best girl Jim ever coached at Elwood, wonderful shooter and totally dedicated player. They won 2 silver medals in 3A in Sandi and Sarah's grade 11 and 12 years, losing by 3 and by 11. The first in Grand Falls was his fault. Number 1, I let our parents take their own kids out to dinner right before the championship. Secondly, Sandi was being chased all over by a very quick, much smaller girl, denying her outside shot, and I DID NOT THINK TO POST HER UP. At Hoopla in St. John's, it was just bad luck they lost to a very good Fogo team in a championship played by mistake with a boys sized basketball and her shots were just short. Sandi went on to play one year with Doug Partridge at MUN. After he finished with the girls, Charlie Barker took the girls at Elwood to a much higher level, winning both 3A and 4A gold. Players such as Kerri and Brenda Highmore, Paula Barker and Megan Seaward had great careers at MUN.
Cory Freake was the best player on one of the best Elwood boys teams ever. We had a big, (all going from 6 ft to 6'5 ") smart starting five, Robert Powell at point, Troy Coish at shooting guard, Terry Reid small forward, and Carl Robbins and Cory played post. Cory, a natural guard at university, was our tallest player so played inside. We lost in the 4A semifinal to Booth Memorial, eventual champions, in a game that Booth tied seconds AFTER the buzzer, this according to many neutral observers. With 9 seconds left, Troy Coish was shooting one and one, Elwood up by 2. Cory got the rebound and put the ball back up. With 7 seconds left Booth dribbled down the floor and somehow managed to get 3 contested rebounds, tying the game. It took the refs over 15 minutes to decide it counted - they were looking away from the scoreboard and no one could hear the buzzer. We lost in overtime after Cory fouled out. I felt at least partly responsible for the loss. We had 2 reasonable subs, but I had not played them enough during the season to prepare them for big games, relying far too much on my starting five.
Elwood's best team ever, able to go 8 deep, with 2 players in the Canada Games program, graduated last year. Unfortunately, Covid-19 prevented us from reaching our full potential. Last year we won the Elwood Invitational 44, beating Waterford Valley High, at that time ranked NL #1, twice by 3, won the West Coast HS League, and ended up ranked #2 in the province, only to be upset in the 3A semifinal by Pasadena, a team we had beaten 8 times in the season by double digits.
Did I miss anything? Anything you wanted added in?
I am stepping down as head coach…50 years is a nice round number! I will continue to help alumni Troy Coish and Ryan Chaulk with the program. We will be ranked highly again this year, with three starters in the NL U15 and U17 and a very deep group coming off the bench. All our JV programs have coaching and with no immediate decline in the program numbers it makes for a bright basketball future in Deer Lake!
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I would like to thank Jim for taking the time to answer my questions and reminisce about his basketball days in Deer Lake, Calgary and Pond Inlet! These articles are not designed to create conflict but are simply written to allow the reader an inside look at their favorite NL basketball days and what they are up to now. I love the writing, the discussing and the dreaming! Thanks again Coach K! I am a big fan!
As an aside, Jim and I have been working together on this article since last February and it sure has been a labor of love! I enjoyed reading our notes so much and with 50 years under his belt a lot of material has been left on the production floor!! They don’t make them like Jim anymore!! Enjoy your retirement sir!!
Ian
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