Ray Hurd receives call to Manitoba Basketball Hall of Fame

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This article was published 07/05/2021 (1596 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ray Hurd watched his two championship-winning plays play out in his mind for weeks. All he needed was the right moment to execute them.

Hurd had the Killarney Raiders work them to perfection in practice throughout the 1982 varsity girls basketball season, but had to keep them a secret from the Hamiota Huskies.

“We knew we were going to play Hamiota in the final,” said Hurd, “… and we knew it was going to be a battle to the end. They always seemed to have our number by five, six, seven points but we were going to try a few new things at provincials.”

The coach got his wish. With the provincial AA final in Flin Flon tied 55-55 under two minutes to play and the Huskies with possession, he made the call. Star guard Susan Mauthe pressured the ball handler. As soon as she crossed half court the trap was set. A forward double-teamed her, forcing a rushed pass and the Raiders picked it off. Hurd called a time out with one minute 45 seconds remaining, needing just one more play to cap the season with a crown.

“There was no 30-second clock and I knew they weren’t going to come out of their zone, they’d just sit back in the zone with all the big kids they had,” Hurd said.

“Catherine Woods … and Wendy Johnson were the high-post, low-post. I had one at one side at the top of the key, one at the other. Susan, you couldn’t get the ball from her. When it came down to five, six seconds she was going to hit one of them … When Wendy Johnson got the ball at the top of the key, she took two dribbles down the key and jumped right over top of (future national team forward) Beth Cochran, threw it up and the ball bounced around the rim about three times and fell in. Bedlam broke loose.

“… I remember when it went in, I had about a one-inch vertical and must have jumped two feet in the air.”

Nearly 40 years later, the Brandon native felt the memories flood back. Sitting on the deck at his winter home in Mesa, Arizona, Hurd got the call from Ross Wedlake, an old friend and chairman of the Manitoba Basketball Hall of Fame. Hurd is entering the Hall this fall as part of the class of 2021.

“I have to admit I was quite surprised and quite overwhelmed actually,” Hurd said.

“If I could do it all over again I probably wouldn’t (coach) quite as much as I did and I still would have enjoyed the journey, still would have had great memories, met people. But when I look back it was really unfair to my wife (Peggy) and family, though she was so supportive. That’s one of the reasons I won this award, because of the support I got from her.”

It turns out Peggy played a more direct role with the championship team than many would realize. Hurd moved to Killarney in 1971 to start his teaching career and Peggy wound up at the same school four or five years later, when Ray was coaching both the varsity boys and girls teams.

“Right away she came to teach there and ‘Holy mackerel, I gotta keep my eye on this one,’ I said,” Hurd recalled.

“When basketball season started, that same group that won provincials in 1982 were Grade (6) kids … I asked her, to keep an eye on her, ‘Would you like to coach these kids?’”

They married the following year. Five years later, while Peggy wasn’t in the stands for the championship win, she was rewarded for her efforts thanks to an excited parent, who called the school in Flin Flon to find out who won during the final timeout.

“This kid … ran back and answered the phone. It turned out it was one of my parents, Mrs. Hartwell. She asked the kid ‘Who won the game between Hamiota and Killarney?’ ‘Well, it’s not over. There’s less than a minute to go.’ ‘Well don’t you dare hang up the phone, just leave it there and come back and tell me who won,’” Hurd said.

“Mrs. Hartwell got her coat on, got in her car, drove to the liquor commission, got a bottle of champagne, went to our house in Killarney and walked in … My wife was baking cookies with our kids who were five and three at the time. She looked at the mess and everything, she just went over and put it on the table and said ‘I think you deserve this.’

“Within 10 minutes my wife had a glass of champagne and we didn’t even have the medals around our necks yet.”

Hurd coached in the graduating all-star game that year, selecting seven rural players and beating a team full of Winnipeg talents by 25. A full 10 seasons after he kickstarted the Killarney program, it was a shining testament to just how far the coach had come.

When Hurd looks back on the 15 years he spent in the town about 100 kilometres south of Brandon, however, his pride comes from much more than winning a provincial title or making four finals. He was instrumental in bringing provincial rankings to the A and AA classifications and garnering attention for rural programs. (Manitoba previously had three tiers and currently has four.)

Hurd would coach as many as four basketball teams during a school year, and drove the school bus to ensure his teams could have opportunities to play top teams outside of the region.

He was certainly motivated, and one source of inspiration actually came after he stopped playing for Brandon College Caps. Gary Howard took over as head coach in 1968 and brought new life to basketball in Westman.

Hurd was eager to do the same and wasted no time attracting the top boys and girls teams in Manitoba to his Shamrock Classic, a 16-team tournament unlike any other.

“Now guys like (Neelin’s) Donny Thomson have a zillion-team tournament (the Brandon Sun Spartan Invitational). Back then there wasn’t such a thing as a big tournament,” Hurd said. “I remember going to my principal … he thought I was crazy but anyway we went ahead with it. There was a lot of growing pains that first year, I remember coaching two and reffing six. Guys like Ross Wedlake, he was from Kildonan East and saw I bit off a little too much so he got a whistle out and reffed some games.

“What we tried to do with that tournament is I was trying to get the better city teams and better city teams and have them play in the same tournament … Over the years we had so many teams that went on to the provincial finals in their different categories.”

The quarterfinals and semifinals took place on the Saturday, split between two gyms, with finals all set for Sunday afternoon. But first, there was a dance Saturday evening.

“The kids loved it. The kids got to meet each other, became friends. I didn’t have one single problem all those years, but I wouldn’t do that nowadays, that’s for sure,” Hurd said. “… They played two games and some of the coaches told the kids they could go to the dance for an hour. I don’t think kids were doing, what do you call it, breakdancing, or anything. It was more just the music and socializing.”

A pancake breakfast followed Sunday morning, then the big games.

“We had Daniel (McIntyre) there at their height, (Vincent) Massey Brandon, you had this team from just over the border in North Dakota. We had phenomenal games and it really helped basketball in our area,” Hurd said. “That Sunday afternoon, we just packed that gym … We had great finals all the time, so many finals that went right down to (the wire), one-point games, overtime.”

Hurd’s girls team returned to the AA final in 1983 and again in 1986, settling for silver in his final season with the team. He was named Manitoba High Schools Athletic Association coach of the year.

“I knew that was it. I knew I wasn’t coaching varsity basketball anymore,” Hurd said. “I coached a zillion teams, spent so much time away from my family. I coached two, three, four teams a year, were away every weekend and it was too much. I guess I was getting burned out a bit.”

He took the following year off, moving the family to Quebec before returning to Brandon to teach and coach a few junior high teams, finally stepping away from basketball in 1993. He shifted to substitute teaching in 2009 and completely retired in 2014.

While it has been more than 25 years since Hurd’s last game on the bench, the call to the Hall has reminded him just how much basketball meant to his life.

“There are so many memories. It made me a better person in a lot of ways,” Hurd said. “There’s a lot of coaches out there I became really good friends with … it’s amazing how many people we were in contact with over the years. It was just a wonderful experience and I hope my players enjoyed all those years.”

One more memory in particular stands out, from the moments after the 1982 title win.

“All through the time I coached them in junior high, up we always had a yell … our thing from the time they were in junior high was ‘One, two, three, do it!’” Hurd recalled, choking up ever so slightly.

“We did it for years and years. When it was all over, people were milling around, the floor was full of people, kids crying and stuff, the two captains grabbed me, took me out to mid-court. The kids were all there and they said, ‘One, two, three, we did it.’”

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CLASS OF 2021

The Manitoba Basketball Hall of Fame class will be inducted Sept. 25 in Winnipeg.

Players:

Shawn Gray, Brandon University Bobcats men’s forward from 1993 to 1998.

JoAnne Wells-Small, University of Winnipeg Wesmen women’s forward from 2000 to 2006.

Builders:

Manny Aranez, Ray Hurd, John Klassen and Randy Kusano.

Teams:

Treherne Tigers varsity girls, 1994-2003.

Joseph Wolinsky Raiders varsity boys, 1982-1989.