Forsyth, ’80-’81 Bobcat women’s hoops team headline BU Wall of Fame class

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/03/2018 (2926 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Linda Forsyth (nee Edwards) comes to Brandon to be enshrined in Brandon University’s Dick and Verda McDonald Sports Wall of Fame in October, she may have a fantastic and embarrassing memory about cars popping into her head.

Shortly after arriving in Brandon for her first year attending the university and playing on the Bobcats women’s basketball team, Forsyth and a couple of teammates were driven around town by then athletic director George Birger in his convertible. The group all waved at the passersby, and it was the start of a solid three-year career for the five-foot-10 forward.

One of her final memories of the Wheat City was when she bought her first car to drive up to Neepawa for her first teaching job. Forsyth had just learned to drive back home in Ottawa — her parents didn’t have a car when she grew up — and asked for a standard car, thinking it refered to the windows.

When she got into the car and saw a clutch pedal, she was baffled and had to learn to drive a stick shift in the dealership parking lot before heading up Highway 10 on a long career of teaching and coaching across Western Canada.

For three years though, Forsyth was a star for the Bobcats and she’s grateful to go up on the Wall twice this year, as an individual and as part of the 1980-81 women’s team.

“I guess it’s a big surprise,” she said. “It’s a phone call blast from the past, but I’m very respectful and appreciative of George Birger as the AD and Bill Moody as the coach to give me a cold call and say come start something and see where this team takes us. I was very grateful and appreciative of the opportunity.

“I think I made the most of it. I got my degree and learned a lot. That’s been good.”

The Wheat City actually played a bigger part in Forsyth’s life than she ever thought it would, and it started before she committed to join the Bobcats.

After finishing high school, Forsyth elected not to play on a university team and instead attended the University of Ottawa to begin her education degree and captain the Ontario under-19 women’s basketball team, which competed in the 1979 Canada Games that were oddly enough held in Brandon. Forsyth led Ontario to a silver-medal finish.

She didn’t think much about university basketball after that as her Canada Games squad beat Ontario university teams pretty soundly in the build up to the tournament and club basketball was much stronger at the time. However, she didn’t know much about the Great Plains Athletic Conference.

Forsyth was contacted about coming to Brandon to play and accepted the offer.

She made an immediate impact by finishing second in league scoring, free throws and defensive rebounding in the first year and was named a first-team conference all-star.

Janet Lumsden joined the team the following season and the Bobcats became a real force in the conference. Lumsden led the league with 22.7 points per game, with Forsyth fourth at 17.2.

The duo were the top two free-throw shooters and Forsyth was dominant on the glass, pulling down 7.4 boards per game, second on the team to Claire Booker’s 10.1.

Forsyth described herself as a strong transition player who could also play inside and Lumsden as the best shooter and basketball player she ever played with. However, the key to the team’s 12-4 regular-season record was the coaching of Moody.

“We were very opportunistic and Bill Moody had us in good shape,” said Forsyth, who was named a GPAC all-star in all three years she played at BU. “I don’t know if we took good shots all the time, but we took a lot of them.

“He coached different than a lot of coaches. At the time I didn’t know that much, but now I can see that many of the women’s teams were over-coached and very much played liked girls and it was a slowed-down thing. The very top teams, Bill Moody had us playing like that, fast and loose and athletic and opportunistic. He was a very good coach. I liked him as a coach.”

Unfortunately for the Bobcats, their season came to an end in the GPAC final. Brandon visited the University of Winnipeg Wesmen, who were 15-1 in the regular season, in a best-of-three series and rebounded from a 64-61 loss in the opener with a 54-51 win in Game 2. Lumsden and Forsyth both scored 17 points in the deciding game, but it wasn’t enough as Brandon fell 61-59.

The Bobcats were not invited to nationals as a wildcard team that season, which still bothers Forsyth.

“Because we went out east and won a tournament out east, I think Janet would say it too, we were deserving of that wildcard spot anyways, but because there are more universities in Ontario, more votes came out of Ontario for the wildcard spot and we didn’t get it,” she said. “You pretty well had to win your conference to go, and that’s too bad.”

Forsyth, who was named BU’s female athlete of the team, team MVP and won the H. Stuart Perdue Award for sportsmanship during her time at BU, finished third in league scoring the following season with 17.4 points per game and fourth in rebounding with 5.8 per game, but the team posted an 8-8 record.

She graduated with an education degree and began a 30-year career as a teacher that took her to Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria and Yellowknife. Her husband, Bob, is an engineer and had the family moving quite a bit.

She has three daughters, Genevieve, a fourth-year student at UBC, Louise, a freshman in pre-medicine at Gonzaga University, and Isabelle, who’s in Grade 9. Louise is on Gonzaga’s basketball team and Isabelle has been invited to national team basketball camps.

Despite raising athletic kids, and coaching cross country running, volleyball, basketball and track and field during her career, Forsyth refused to coach their teams.

“You’ve got to take the athletes to an uncomfortable place of challenge and difficulty and I didn’t want to go there with my girls,” the 58-year-old said. “I just wanted to step back and my husband definitely didn’t want them to go to that spot. When we came home, we talked sports, but in the car ride home we had this rule that we don’t talk about that practice and we don’t talk about that game. They have to bring it up, but not in the car. We’d come home and they’d come and talk.

“We’re just a bank account and a pompom and a chauffeur. Don’t ask me to do too much.”

Forsyth is looking forward to coming back to Brandon and reconnecting with old teammates, having a few drinks with them and playing in the basketball alumni game. She’s trying to get into good shape for the contest.

But looking back on her time at BU, she wishes she had done a few things differently, and she’s trying to instill those thoughts into her kids.

“I think I would show more respect for the local people,” she said. “I was quite self-absorbed and focused on basketball and academics. What I tell my daughter who’s at Gonzaga, don’t study where your teammates study, go study with people who want to be that profession. Don’t go to the athletes’ quarters to study, go to the biology lab cause that’s where people with that passion are. I could have done a better job finding people with passions like my own. Maybe that’s an old- or wise-person saying.

“I could have been more appreciative and acknowledged my teammates who didn’t play as much as I did. … My first year, the local girls worked their hearts out and went to every single practice. Some of them were veterans and gave up big minutes so someone like myself or Laura Gillespie or Janet Lumsden could play.

We took all those minutes away from them. I think I could have been more acknowledging that it takes more than five players on the team or two players with 60 points.”

Forsyth and the 1980-81 women’s basketball team will be joined on the Wall this year by Courtney Bailey, Earnest Bell, Bob Caldwell, Lynda Kidd Chorley, Bruce Gullett, Brian Pallister, Euan Roberts, Marie Rohleder and the 1979-80 men’s basketball team. The induction ceremony will take place on Oct. 13. Tickets cost $50 and are available at the Healthy Living Centre.

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Other inductees of the 2018 Brandon University Dick and Verda McDonald Sports Wall of Fame Class:

COURTNEY BAILEY

Courtney Bailey was in charge of running BU’s high-octane offence in the late 1980s and he made sure the Bobcats never missed a beat. The “backbone of the backcourt” finished his five-year career with back-to-back national titles in 1987 and 1988.

Bailey joined the Bobcats in 1983 after being recruited out of Toronto. By the end of his fourth season, he was a major award winner after earning the prestigious Jim Casey trophy for sportsmanship. In his final season, the Great Plains Athletic Conference recognized him as a second team all-star and he was also named the Bobcats’ co-MVP alongside Patrick Jebbison.

EARNEST BELL

Earnest Bell answered the call for Brandon in a big way in the two special seasons he wore a Bobcat jersey.

The product of Louisville, Ky., guided BU to back-to-back appearances in the national championship game, where Bell and the Bobcats brought home silver medals. He garnered glowing accolades in 2000 and 2001, being named an all-Canadian, a national tournament all-star, GPAC player of the year and Brandon University’s male athlete of the year.

BOB CALDWELL

Bob Caldwell is an inspirational leader in the coaching world and the groundwork was built as a Bobcat.

The Hamiota product played two seasons with the men’s hockey team and helped Brandon capture back-to-back Great Plains Athletic Conference championships in 1973-74 and 1974-75.

Caldwell has over 40 years of coaching experience at the local, national and international levels.

LYNDA CHORLEY (nee Kidd)

Lynda Kidd Chorley was arguably the best all-around female athlete to come out of southwestern Manitoba.

The Hamiota basketballer became the first-ever female winner of the Brandon Sun’s H.L. Krug Crawford sportsperson of the year award in 1964.

Chorley played at Brandon College for two seasons (1964-66) and dominated on offence. Chorley was the Capettes’ top scorer as they played exhibition games against teams from Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon and Edmonton.

BRUCE GULLETT

Bruce Gullett was a rugged, tougher than nails blue-liner with the Brandon College Caps hockey team from 1961 to 1965.

Gullett’s grit was displayed in full force on the gridiron for three seasons where he served as captain and played on both sides of the ball. His efforts earned him a prestigious spot on the all-time Cap/Bobcat football team.

He also excelled on the baseball field, representing Team Canada at the world championship in 1972 in Nicaragua.

BRIAN PALLISTER

Brian Pallister was known for his imposing sky hook as a member of the Brandon University men’s basketball team and he continued to shoot for the sky beyond the Bobcats.

The six-foot-eight centre played with BU from 1974 to 1976, and then returned for the ’79-80 season to help the Bobcats win their first-ever conference championship and reach the national final.

His connection to Brandon University Athletics remains strong today. He founded a scholarship to benefit female student-athletes in 2014.

EUAN ROBERTS

Euan Roberts had a remarkable run as a member of the Bobcat men’s basketball team from 1991 to 1996.

The Great Plains Athletic Conference recognized him as a league all-star in the final three years of his career. He helped the Bobcats capture three league titles and earn five straight trips to the national tournament over the course of his career.

In his final season, the Bobcats won the 1996 CIAU championship to claim the program’s fourth national title.

At the conclusion of the season, Roberts was recognized as the team’s co-MVP, sharing the honour with teammate Keith Vassell.

MARIE ROHLEDER

The Boissevain product was named a Great Plains Athletic Conference all-star in three of her five seasons with the Bobcats. Rohleder is in select company when it comes to all-star selections of the GPAC era. She joins Linda Edwards, Sandra Hamilton and Janet Lumsden as the only women’s basketball players to be recognized as a league all-star three or more times.

She was co-winner of BU’s rookie of the year award in 1983-84 after a standout high school career. Rohleder was a tenacious rebounder and was rewarded for her efforts. In her final two seasons, she finished second in the conference in that category. In the three seasons prior, she finished in the top five or better in league rebounding.

She was recognized as the 1987 Brandon University female athlete of the year and team MVP.

1979-80 MEN’S BASKETBALL TEAM

The 1979-80 Bobcat men’s basketball team laid the foundation for the program’s long-running success in the years to follow.

Brandon finished with an overall record of 40-10. At the time, it was the best season in BU men’s basketball history. They finished in first place in the Great Plains Athletic Conference with a near perfect record of 15-1.

The Bobcats claimed their first-ever GPAC title by knocking off their provincial rival, the University of Winnipeg Wesmen in the final to advance to the CIAU tournament for the first time.

At nationals, the Bobcats edged York 91-90 in the quarter-finals and beat Winnipeg in the semifinals 85-81 before dropping a 73-65 decision against the Victoria Vikes in the final.

Keith Streiter was named a league all-star, while Jerry Hemmings earned GPAC and CIAU coach of the year honours.