It would be unfair to suggest that Sudbury is where it all started for legendary basketball coach Ken Shields.
The Western Canadian native, member of the Order of Canada (1999) and Canada Sports Hall of Fame inductee (2009) had already begun to move away from his early fascination with hockey when he accepted the Laurentian University men’s basketball coaching appointment in 1971, a year after leading the UBC women’s team to a Canadian Senior A championship, coaching alongside Norm Vickery.
What is true, however, is that the next six years that Shields and his future wife, Kathy, would spend in Sudbury definitely helped shape a career that would see the now 79-year-old go on to lead the University of Victoria men’s team to seven straight national titles (1980 – 1986) before being named head coach of Team Canada from 1990 to 1994.
This also explains, in large part, why there was absolutely no hesitation whatsoever to make the lengthy journey, at this point in his life, from his home on the West Coast across the country to Sudbury when current LU bench boss Brandon Edwards invited Shields to be part of the recent celebration of the decade that was the 1970s in Laurentian basketball lore.
“I loved my time in Sudbury,” Shields said, relaxing at a local hotel. To wit, this story that he wished to share.
“My father passed away when I was living here and my parents still lived in the middle of British Columbia. Our living room was full of flowers when I arrived home, all from Sudbury. These were the kids of people that I had connected with in Sudbury. They had never even met my parents. There is no other city in Canada where you have had a response like that.”
Beyond the friendships that were made in the university setting, in the city and on the gridiron — Shields would spend five wonderful years with coach Sid Forster and the Sudbury Spartans, even though he had never played a single down of football before arriving in Northern Ontario — the man who can now wander over to the “Ken and Kathy Shields Court” (2002) on the U Vic campus owes some of his foundational learnings in the sport of basketball to his time at Laurentian.
“As a young coach, you make as many mistakes as the players do,” Shields said. “I think the thing I treasure the most was developing a trusting relationship with the players.”
Spend a few minutes with the likes of Mike Heale, Francis Sheridan, Mike Mulvihill and a host of others who played with the Voyageurs during his tenure and joined their former coach at the festivities at halftime of a Sudbury Five game earlier this month and you begin to appreciate just how special a coach Ken Shields was.
“In those days, it was hard to get southern Ontario kids to come up to Laurentian,” said Shields. “So I focused on trying to get the best kids from northern Ontario to come here. We had an all-Northern Ontario team and finished fourth in the country.”
Long recognized for the emphasis that he placed on overall physical fitness, Shields also was equal parts appreciative of the basic tenets of his sport, but more than willing to assess innovative ideas, all wrapped around a personality of a gentleman who players felt was equally as invested in the battle at hand as they were.
“I might have to coach a little bit differently today, but the fundamentals of basketball are still the same,” Shields said. “The way the game is played has changed, but in many ways, there are no new plays. But the players of today are certainly more gifted. What they can do now is amazing.”
His is an appreciation that speaks to his start in basketball, first introduced to the hardcourt when his family moved from northern Alberta to the Queen Charlotte Islands (he was in Grade 6) and later to Prince Rupert.
“I wanted to do something so I played basketball in the village on the reservation,” Shields recalled. “I’m a skinny little white guy and I had no basketball acumen at all, but I was welcomed onto the team.”
Shields developed, albeit slowly.
In his Grade 11 year in Prince Rupert, he signed on as manager of a “B” team at the school. “I wasn’t even close to making the team,” he said. His improvement was nothing if not meteoric, cracking the roster of an “A” squad that would go on to capture a provincial title.
Suiting up at Mount Royal College, the University of Calgary (1965-1967) and the University of British Columbia (1967-1969), Shields would take his first shot at coaching the following season, all while completing his masters at UBC.
The rest, as they say, is history. But Ken Shields will not soon forget that relatively short slice of history during which he called Sudbury home.
Randy Pascal is a sportswriter in Greater Sudbury. Pursuit is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.