Colfax a legend in high school hoops

Dan Colfax coached boys basketball for nearly five decades across multiple London and area high schools — and Fanshawe College. His mentorship has impacted generations of players.

Dan Colfax (left) stands with Osman Omar, one of his former players, earlier this year when Westminster renamed its senior boys basketball tournament the Colfax Classic in honour of the former coach. (Photo submitted).

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Dan Colfax can reel off a list of reasons why coaching held his attention for half a century – but one constantly rises to the top.

“Winning. I always loved winning.”

Recently, the legendary London prep coach sat down to reflect on his 50-year career as a pioneer and builder of the game, shaping players both on and off the court, and leaving a lasting legacy on the local basketball community.

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Colfax came to the game early in life, being taught its ins and outs by legendary London South coach and educator Ernie McTavish.

Starting in 1966, Colfax built a career that spanned Westminster, Banting, and Beal, as well as Fanshawe College. Thousands of players. Hundreds of games. Dozens of titles. He built a reputation as a pioneer and a builder of the game, and he was one of the city’s first coaches to set expectations beyond the city limits as he took his teams across the province – “to be the best, you had to beat the best.”

Even today, his former players speak of teams built on discipline, commitment, accountability, and, above all, hard work – all lessons that translated from the court to the classroom and, later, into life.

“These kids didn’t walk into the gym having never bounced the basketball,” Colfax said. “I was fortunate in that I had a reputation of quite a bit of success. The kids wanted to be on my team because they thought they had a chance of winning. They knew that if they loved the game, were good enough, hustled enough, they could continue in the game, in college, in the pros, or as coaches.”

It wasn’t just the championship spotlight that attracted Colfax to coaching. He loved the day-in- day-out part of the craft. Even practices were designed with the same detail of a championship game. Preparation was always key.

“I always loved if we had tried something new in the practice and it worked out really well,” Colfax said. “Finding a good strategy to put into the game for our players – that’s what I liked. I was one of the first coaches to use a match-up zone where we looked like we were playing a zone, but we were playing a form of man-to-man. Those kinds of things turned me on.”

Colfax’s resume of players is littered with local hoops luminaries, including former Laurier standout and current Fanshawe head coach Tony Marcotullio and European leagues veteran Dejan Kravic. To this day, the coach remembers what he saw in elite talents like those.

“I looked for kids committed to working as hard as they could, committed to the team, committed to their fellow players. I also looked at how tall they were,” he laughed. “I was interested if they would ask questions about certain things, if they were curious, how they would work with other people.

“I also looked for kids who enjoyed what they were doing. If they weren’t enjoying themselves, you don’t need that on the team. I needed everybody to be fired up and ready to go and willing to give everything they’ve got for the team.”

(Photo submitted).

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While the coach still speaks with pride about his players who went on to play the game at a high level, Colfax speaks with the same reverence of the accomplishments of names you might not know by heart.

“I'm really proud of the fact I had influence on kids – the right kind of influence – that they would go on to do all the right things in their lives. You teach the kids to work with each other. It’s the kind of skill that just continues with everything they did in their lives.”

He continued, “I learned a lot from the kids, too. I went through a lot of experiences with them that made me a better person, a friendlier person, and definitely a better coach. There is an empathy that coaching develops.”

Colfax and his wife, Heather, treated his teams like extended family by opening their doors and hearts to players. Heather shuttled players around, washed practice jerseys, and did anything else the team needed. She was the team mom.

“If you’re coaching kids, you have to realize that how you treat these young people is so very, very important,” Colfax said. “I was hard on them, expected a lot from them, but on the other side, I complimented them. We worked on their weaknesses and encouraged them to get better. You instill in them the fact that they need to work on the whole aspect of their playing career and that was going to make them successful.

“I was human enough that I used to have the kids over here for dinner and do some of those social aspects. You need to get to know them as people, and about their lives, just as they got to know me as a person, and about my life.”

After 32 years in the classroom, Colfax retired from teaching in 1998, but continued to coach until 2016. That’s 50 years shaping players. While details have faded over time, his memories are stronger than ever about the joy his career brought him.

“All those years, I had some very good experiences with kids,” Colfax said. “I got hooked on the coaching aspect of life and totally enjoyed it. I enjoyed finding that talent, that role inside each individual player: What is their strength, how do I draw that out, how do I encourage them to be successful, how do I teach them to be disciplined and be a team player? It was interesting to see players grow and mature – and maybe some of what I taught them stuck, as a lot of them went into teaching and coaching later in life.”

When you’re in your 80s, it’s not uncommon to be asked about legacy. That was particularly true earlier this year when Westminster renamed its senior boys basketball tournament the Colfax Classic in the former coach’s honour. It’s part of a lasting legacy for a coach whose influence will be felt for generations.

“When I think back, basketball has given me some very, very fond memories. A lot of memories at a lot of different schools with a lot of different and wonderful people. All of them are important in my life.”