A basketball coach is about to be called for travelling.
DeWinton’s Donovan Martin is hanging up his whistle after 25 years coaching women’s college basketball at Mount Royal College and with the SAIT Trojans.
“Because I’m old,” Martin said when asked why he was retiring. “I had a realization that in four years I will be 70. My wife (Barb) and I want to do some other things, travelling that kind of thing.”
Martin leaves with the most victories in Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference women’s basketball history with 447 (including playoffs).
His teams have won 18 ACAC medals. He won a national title in 2000 with the then Mount Royal College Cougars. Martin’s squads also won five silver medals at the national level. His regular season winning percentage was .818.
Not bad for a guy who learned the ropes coaching the Red Deer Lake Junior High School Dragons.
“When I first got the job at Mount Royal, I had never seen an ACAC game,” Martin said. “I would never get the job today. The athletic director at the time, Al Bohonus, took a chance. We had a pretty good year and it just kept going on.”
Fittingly, Martin received an Al Bohonus Award, for contribution to the ACAC, at the Trojans last home game on Feb. 28.
“He was my mentor at Mount Royal, and kind of guided me from being a school coach to a college coach,” Martin said. “It really meant a lot to me to receive the award, it’s kind of going full circle.”
He kept much of the same philosophy he used at Red Deer Lake when he made the jump to the college level.
“Some of the same motivational techniques would work,” Martin said. “Obviously we ran more complicated systems. In junior high, you are trying to develop the players. In college you are trying to win.
“But players are players at any age. As long as they had that desire, the willingness to work hard we were on the same page.”
His teams did win.
He coached at Mount Royal College for eight seasons. Taking a leave of absence at the end of the 1989-90 season to coach his children Ryan and Cori, at Red Deer Lake. He returned to the Cougs in 1998 and coached there for nine years before going north to their rivals, the SAIT Trojans.
“The game is much faster than it was since I started,” Martin said. “Back in those days there was the odd good shooter, now every team has two or three good shooters. The game has evolved as it should be.”
His 2000 national title was one of his highlights, but he had some others.
“About five years ago I took a team down to a CIS tournament in Dalhousie and we were the only college team there – I don’t even know how we got in exactly,” he said with a chuckle. “We beat Dalhousie and got to the final, losing to Acadia by about four points.
“To me, that was a real highlight. A real statement as to where college basketball was at the time.”
He might be older, but he never lost the edge.
The Trojans finished with a 20-4 record in the ACAC this season, bowing out to the Lethbridge Kodiaks — the no. 3 team in the nation — in the league final on March 7.
It’s the players who keep him young.
“The players are always younger, eager and anxious to get going,” Martin said. “They bring a lot of energy and enthusiasm and I get swept up in that…. A highlight for me is seeing how the team had progressed from when you start in September to the end of the season in March.
“That was always a source of great satisfaction for me.”
His knowledge of basketball in the Foothills area paid off during his successful college career.
“When I first got the job in 1982, one of the first things I did was try to get girls I knew, like Colleen Flanagan from Red Deer Lake who I coached in junior high,” he said. “I continued to try and kid gets from High River, Okotoks — and I had a lot of good kids from Red Deer Lake.”
Some of those players from the Foothills included former Holy Trinity Academy Knight Annalise Posein, High River’s Katie Waring on this year’s Trojan team, and former Red Deer Lake Dragon, Foothills Falcon and now Oilfields Drillers girls basketball coach Paige Bowman.
“I love to see former players to get into coaching,” Martin said of Bowman. “All she has to say: “hey be like me’ and it would be great. She’s a hard worker.”
Bowman attended Martin’s final game at SAIT on Feb. 28 — a 68-62 victory over the Medicine Hat Rattlers.
“He was one of the first person’s to get me into basketball (at Red Deer Lake, so he was pretty influential in my life,” Bowman said. “From the beginning of my career, he pushed me pretty hard and helped me… The expectations of us, whether we were in junior high or college was high.”
She won zone titles with Martin’s Dragons at Red Deer Lake.
At Mount Royal, Bowman was on a Cougar team that was fourth in the nation that Martin coached.
“It was nice to be at Donovan’s final home game and to see him honoured,” Bowman said. “He deserves it.”
Donovan Martin' s ACAC coaching records:
• Most regular season and playoff games (472, 97); • Most regular season and playoff wins (384, 59); • Most seasons (25); • Most ACAC Championship gold medals (7)• Most National championship appearances by an ACAC coach (9).• ACAC championship medals - 18 (seven gold, six silver, five bronze)• national championship medals - 6 (one gold, five silver)• Most combined wins in ACAC women's basketball history - 447• ACAC Coach of the Year awards - 4 (1999, 2000, 2010, 2012)• Consecutive ACAC medals won - 14 (1982-1989, 1998-2003)