A Redcoat for life
It’s an hour and a half before the start of Governor Simcoe’s Standard quarter-final game versus Thorold and Redcoats head basketball coach Shaun Feor isn’t pouring over game plans for the encounter.
Instead, the 39-year-old, who was born and raised in the north end of St. Catharines, is helping to take admissions at the door for the consolation game that precedes the Simcoe game.
In the past decade, the human resources lead with Accenture has become an integral part of the Redcoats basketball program.
“He has been fantastic,” Simcoe phys-ed head Jill Stiefelmeyer said. “He has been here as a player and graduate and he has been involved with the program as long as I’ve been here.”
Stiefelmeyer loves the commitment Feor shows to his players and the program.
“He’s so passionate with the guys and he goes above and beyond as a mentor and a coach to these players,” she said. “They are almost like his own kids and he will do everything for them. He puts so much time and effort into it.”
Married with no children, Feor jokes about being a dad of a large family.
“I have 12 new ones (children) every season,” he said, with a smile.
Feor’s roots at Simcoe go back to him being a player on teams coached by Pat (Woody) Woodburn, Mike Fitzgerald and John Dakin.
He was a starter and a captain for two years on the senior team, but had the misfortune of playing basketball at a time when Denis Morris was a provincial powerhouse. Feor never got a chance to compete at the Ontario Federation of Secondary Schools Association championship.
‘We would always make it the city final and we lost at the horn in my last year when a kid named Chris Sims sank a bucket to win by one.”
He got his start in coaching during his last year as a player at Governor Simcoe. It was a work-to-rule year and Dakin asked him to coach the midget boys team.
“It was a great team,” he said. “It had players like Anthony Haughton and Brandon Gracie who went on to play college and university ball.
“I won a city championship that year with those kids and I just fell in love with coaching.”
Feor has been the head coach of the senior team at Governor Simcoe for three years and has coached at Simcoe for the past nine years. He also ran a Niagara North AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) travel basketball program for seven years. The president of the Seafarers’ International Union of Canada, Jim Given, had a son Cody playing under Feor at Simcoe and was impressed by Simcoe basketball.
“His (Cody’s) dad just believed in the culture we had here so the union would give us money every summer and we would takes boys from all over the region to Philly and Boston.”
Away from Simcoe, Feor is coaching a 16 and under boys team in Pelham.
“I have a boys to men philosophy,” Feor said. “I see the guys come in and I try to develop them on the court and off the court as well.
“Here at Simcoe, we are heavily involved in the community and we try to teach the boys how to contribute to society.”
Simcoe basketball players help with yard work around the school and pitch in at Governor Simcoe’s summer hoops camps.
For Feor, it is a labour of love.
“Basketball has taken myself and others all over the world If I wasn’t involved with basketball I would never have been to the places I’ve seen and experienced the things I’ve experienced,” he said.
