MacDonald’s coaching career about giving back
Jeff MacDonald’s high school coaching career was all about paying it forward.
“I think I tried to give back to my great coaches that I had in high school,” said the Saint Paul basketball coach, who retired from teaching last week. “I had great mentors and role models.”
MacDonald, Rick Oreskovich, Tony Arcuri were part of same graduating class at Notre Dame.
“All three of us have coached multiple sports in our high school careers and the mentoring that we received at Notre Dame prepared us in a fabulous way to give back the great opportunity they gave us,” the 59-year-old Welland native said. “Hopefully my players — and some of them have already started — can give back to their community.
“Volunteer coaches are a great commodity in our society.”
MacDonald’s favourite part of coaching was team building.
“I enjoyed taking 12 people that didn’t really know each other that well and weren’t friends and moulding them into a group and a family that worked together.”
He believes school sport is an important part of community building.
“I have always thought that having a good team was a great asset to the school, especially for morale, because they could get behind something as you saw with the Raptors this year,” he said. “They have something that they rally behind and the school atmosphere improves.”
MacDonald doesn’t need to revisit history to remember that feeling.
“I saw it this year with football and I saw it with basketball at the Review tournament. It is something that is a positive influence with students, with faculty and the administration.”
He credits all the administrators he had along the way with helping make coaching easy.
“They have all been extremely supportive and I have always thought the administration at Niagara Catholic was topnotch.”
MacDonald, who has already started work as the kitchen manager at Sheraton on the Falls, isn’t sure what the future is for high school sports.
“Hopefully, the people who are leaving are replaced by people who have the same level of commitment and empathy for the students,” he said. “It would be great if we could still provide a service free of charge to the students of Ontario.”
MacDonald started coaching in 1980 when he was in charge of the Notre Dame junior football team while still attending Brock University. He then began working at Brock’s sports medicine clinic with Joe Kenny and was assigned to Brock’s men’s basketball as athletic therapist, filling that role from 1983 to 1991.
In 1987, he was involved with Basketball Ontario’s provincial teams and went to the Canada Games in 1988. In 1988, he was part of a team that won a national championship.
He attended the World University Games in 1991 with Basketball Canada and saw the men’s team defeat the Soviet Union on the way to a silver medal. He was also at the Pan Am Games in 1991.
“I was able to see some great coaches such as Mike Katz and I liked working with Ken Murray and Garney Henley (at Brock) and a number of high school coaches through the years.”
In 1984, he worked at St. Catharines Collegiate and Governor Simcoe as a supply teacher and in 1987-88 he started with the Niagara Catholic District School Board at Monsignor Clancy.
“I was lucky enough at Clancy to work with my good friends, Frank Capretta and Mark Gallagher,” he said. “We all worked together and it culminated when we got this little scrawny kid from Thorold, Ryan Serravalle.
“We were lucky enough to win an OFSAA (Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations) gold medal in 1994 and the next year win a silver medal.”
He enjoyed developing players.
“Over the years, I saw the good players become better and the better players became great,” he said. “And when the average person wanted to be part of the team, we tried to make them feel great and part of that unit.”
He moved on to work and coach with Mike Pullar at Denis Morris.
“We had some good teams and went to OFSAA with Didi Mukendi and we had some great trips over the years,” he said. “We went to New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, we played many times in the U.S. and were lucky enough to play in the Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas.”
MacDonald concluded his teaching career at Saint Paul.
“Again we went to OFSAA twice and I think we have produced some great players here,” he said. “I have had a great opportunity to work with great kids.”
MacDonald plans to continue helping Capretta with Saint Paul’s senior boys basketball team.
