BU names Bambury women’s basketball coach

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This article was published 21/06/2021 (1032 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One year away from basketball was enough for James Bambury to erase any shred of doubt that he lives for the game.

After 14 years coaching university women’s ball from England to Ontario, he jumped at the chance to apply for the newly open Brandon University job in April, when Novell Thomas stepped down after nine seasons. On Tuesday, BU named Bambury the 17th head coach in program history.

He moves on from his most recent job, interim head coach at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., where he guided the Gaels women’s team to a 16-8 record and national No. 3 ranking in 2019-20. A new challenge awaits as he’ll take over a group that won just one game that year.

“We’ve always been people to do things that maybe scare them, frighten them or challenge them. That’s what we’ve always done. My wife (Kate) and I, two days after we got married, flew to London with two bags of luggage and a little bit of effort. We’ve never been afraid of that big move, that big step or that big jump,” Bambury said.

“We’ve been able to reflect over the past 12 to 18 months that basically our entire life together has been me coaching and trying to figure out ‘Is that what we’re going to keep doing?’ It kept coming back to ‘Absolutely, but it has to be in the right place.’ We really feel like the community experience at Brandon and the opportunities there really fit with what we enjoy doing.”

As a military brat who lived in 13 communities in 26 years, basketball was one key constant in Bambury’s life. He’d arrive in a new town with a ball tucked under his arm and eyes peeled for the nearest outdoor court.

“It was really my connection to community, it was my peer group, it was my in,” he said.

Originally a Nova Scotia native, Bambury eventually made his way to Queen’s to play guard for three seasons from 2000 to 2003. He moved to Leeds, England four years later and volunteered to coach at Leeds Metropolitan University — now Leeds Beckett University — at age 26.

He spent three years there before accepting the women’s head coach job at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston.

After two years, however, the basketball program was cut. A day later, Queen’s women’s coach Dave Wilson called him up and offered one of the first full-time assistant coach jobs in the country. In 2012, for the first time in his life, Bambury was an assistant.

“I think that was one of the greatest experiences of working with Dave and as an assistant was I never knew what you didn’t know,” Bambury said.

“… He had a completely different interaction style than me, though we … were connected at the core when it came to why we were doing it. The reason we were coaching is we were trying to provide the best experience for student-athletes and help them become the best human beings they can possibly be. We were both on the same page that way.”

Bambury, 38, took the past year off, to take a step back and home school his son Wes, 7, and daughter Ella, 5, as well as restore a historic home on Wolfe Island, Ont.

Of course, that focus has quickly shifted to the Bobcat program. He enters as the 17th coach in women’s program history. Three have spent more than four years at the helm and just one, Bill Moody, has a winning record at 72-51 overall.

The BU women have just one playoff appearance since joining Canada West in 2001, when they lost a best-of-three play-in series 2-1 at Trinity Western in 2017. They won just eight conference games in the following three seasons.

Brandon retains its entire roster from the cancelled 2020-21 season, however, and Thomas recruited a class featuring two provincial teamers in Beth Dueck and Cali Yates, six-foot-three Spanish forward Noah Garcia and a college transfer Andrea Taruc-Montero, who gets to enter as a first-year due to Quebec college rules for players with one or two seasons played.

Bambury is looking forward to the challenge.

“Two ways I approach everything: 100 per cent positive energy and enthusiasm, and then 100 per cent honesty. Going into a scenario, looking around and saying ‘Where do we want to get to and how are we going to get there?’” he said. “And being very open with the program, developing a team around the team, making sure I’m able to find assistants that can teach me more about the school, the area, the team, maybe they know some of the players.

“And really making connections with the players. Ultimately coaching is about relationships.”

Bambury was part of a short list including seven candidates, who made presentations that players were allowed to take in. Ultimately, the recommendation for hiring comes from a committee as the job is part of the faculty of education.

“We’re feeling good. We had a strong group of applicants and it was a really competitive process. We interviewed some really good candidates and James ended up being what we think was the best situation moving forward,” said BU athletic director Russ Paddock.

“Everybody, certainly to be in a position to be considered, has a passion for basketball and coaching but that really came across in his interview.”

One massive hole Thomas leaves in the Westman basketball community is in the programs he worked tirelessly to form: Bobcat Basketball Academy, Jr. Bobcats and the Westman Youth Basketball Association. Bambury said his time in Kingston, a city of about 136,000, made the importance of grassroots programs in smaller centres clear.

“We want to create basketball fans, we want to create basketball players. We want to provide them with opportunities so when they come out and see our players play, we want to say we have a pathway for them to be able to get to where the current players are. That’s an absolute must,” Bambury said.

“The other thing is I just love basketball. If it wasn’t for the volunteers, if it wasn’t for the people running youth leagues … I wouldn’t be able to do what I love to do for pretty much my entire adult life, which is coach basketball. It’s also a responsibility, for our players and program and for our community, for us to be able to get out and give back.

“I really want people to reach out if they have questions. If there’s local clubs that want me to come talk, I’m here for the basketball community, I’m here for the Bobcat community to really throw myself in and contribute as much as possible.”

FREE THROWS: U Sports announced that the 2022 men’s basketball national championship is set for the University of Alberta in Edmonton and the 2021 football Vanier Cup is at Laval in Quebec City. The rest of the championships are expected to be announced within the next two weeks.

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