A couple of days had passed since Philomath Middle School’s eighth-grade girls basketball team had posted an A-game victory over Cheldelin to remain undefeated four games into the season. Head coach Jim Hall was running the kids through drills in the school’s gymnasium to not only keep players on top of their game heading into Thanksgiving week but to prepare the Braves for a Nov. 27 game in Dallas.
Nearly 40 years ago, Hall started his lifelong love of coaching middle school athletics when he landed a job in Lincoln City. After 11 years there, he took a teaching position at Philomath in 1995 and has continued to work with youngsters on the basketball court.
Hall, 62, said he’s coached 1,328 games in Philomath — he had to go through old scorebooks and schedules to figure out the number. He estimates that he gets in an average of about 44 games per year — 11-game seasons for both the boys and girls A and B teams. And for his first five years at Philomath, he also coached in tournaments at the request of the boys and girls high school coaches.
“One of the reasons that I’ve coached so long is the support of the community and support of administration at the school and the high school coaches and their dedication and involvement,” Hall said.
Several teams over the years have done very well when it comes to win-loss records.
“We’ve had quite a few undefeated teams but with the way middle school basketball is set up with the schools they aren’t into doing end-of-season tournaments — it’s just whatever your league record is,” Hall said.
One of his former players, Ty May, who is now a freshman at Oregon State University, remembers Hall’s impact on his development in middle school.
“The thing that I remember most about Jim is he never really got too fired up,” May said. “He stayed pretty calm the whole time and he was a really steady, level-headed basketball coach.”
May remembers Hall stressing the fundamentals.
“As a middle school coach, that’s huge, you know, with player development and trying to get players ready for high school ball where they can kind of hone in on their own personal skills,” May said. “That was huge for my game as well — he pounded the fundamentals.”
Hall’s association with the sport goes back to his own childhood.
“I played in the rec leagues and then I played in middle school and high school and in college intramurals,” he said. “I just love the strategy of it and love the game.”
Hall attended high school at Central Linn — graduating in 1979 — back when the Halsey school was in the same league as Philomath. He went on to earn a degree in elementary education at Oregon State University.
After college, Hall transitioned into coaching as a side gig to his work as a classroom educator.
“When I got my first teaching job over in Lincoln City, they offered coaching as well, so I coached football and basketball,” Hall said, the job at Taft Elementary and Middle School. “I loved the different-than-classroom interaction with the kids and enjoyed working with the parents and just teaching kids fundamentals and trying to help them learn how to be competitive in a healthy way.”
Hall’s first experience leading a team actually occurred at OSU as coach of his dorm team in intramurals hoops.
When the Philomath opportunity surfaced, Hall jumped at the chance to live and work in a community that he knew supported athletics. He landed a job as a sixth-grade teacher at the middle school and in the beginning coached both basketball and football.
“I knew about the support the community has for the school and liked the idea of a one high school school district,” he said, explaining that Lincoln City had become more congested during his time there. “We had a lot of friends out there and enjoyed the experience but it was time to get our oldest daughter over here before she entered high school.”
About seven years after moving to Philomath, Hall was among those who established Living Faith Community Church. He transitioned into a full-time position with the church and continues today as its senior pastor.
Hall has maintained his association with the middle school through the years as a basketball coach — never leaving those duties except for a two-year period when the Philomath Youth Activities Club took over the program. A season was also lost a few years ago to COVID. Even when PYAC had seventh- and eighth-grade basketball, Hall coached his own kids on the teams that they played on.
Hall coached only boys at Taft but has taken on girls coaching as well at Philomath.
“I had been here less than a week and Terry Thomas and Dave Garvin showed up in my classroom and they wanted to visit with me because they wanted me to coach both boys and girls at Philomath,” he said.
At the time, Thomas was the girls coach and Garvin the boys coach at Philomath High.
When the program reverted back to the middle school, Hall was asked to come back as a coach.
“I said I’ll do it if we can keep the same kids for two years,” he said. “So that’s what we’ve done since. I’ll start with them as seventh graders and then I’ll have them in the eighth-grade year, too. So I can advance a lot further with them and not having to start all the way over again.”
This academic year, Hall is with the eighth-grade girls — currently in season — and will begin in January with the seventh-grade boys. The other coaches are Rick Bennett with the eighth-grade boys and Alan Jozwiak with the seventh-grade girls.
Hall said he has always enjoyed coaching at the middle school level.
“I love teaching fundamentals and instilling that winning culture at a young age,” he said. “I love the relationships with the kids and interacting with the community outside of what I normally would.”
Beyond those reasons, coaching gives Hall an outlet for his competitive nature.
“I love the strategy of it,” he said. “I love the X’s and O’s — I’m a basketball nerd.”
Several assistants have helped Hall over the years from former players to student parents. His current assistant for the girls is Alison Jensen.
Hall said he coaches to the talent of the athletes but also has worked in elements of what the students will see at the high school level.
“I think the main thing for (high school coaches) Ben (Silva) and Blake (Ecker) is if the kids are coming up with a good work ethic and coming up with that winning culture already established and coming up with solid fundamentals, they’re good,” Hall said.
May recalled a time when he barked at an official.
“He had the same rules as Blake for the technical thing,” May said. “One time, I was being a punk, you know, talking back to a ref and I sat the rest of the game and ran in practice the next day just because he knows what Blake expects and he wants to instill that early on.”
May went on to see significant time on the floor under Ecker as a PHS freshman, although he also developed his skills to a certain degree during those early years in club ball and by competing on summer tournament teams.
May hopes to coach himself one day — perhaps taking a little bit of his middle school and high school coaches’ approaches to the game with him.
“I actually can’t wait to coach,” he said. “I want to coach football a little more than I would basketball but I also really, really enjoy the way Blake and Jim in middle school and (former PHS assistant) Eddie (Van Vlack) structured a good basketball program. I feel like I would want to someday in the future be able to coach and see if I can do it as decently as they can.”
After so many years coaching and now in his 60s, the obvious question comes up — how long does Hall plan to do this?
“I’m going to start with a group of seventh-grade boys next year so I’m at least in it for two more years,” Hall said. “Because once I commit to them as seventh graders, I’ll stick with them as eighth graders. But as long as the school will have me and as long as I’m enjoying it, I’ll probably keep doing it.”
