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through the looking glass - people of the city Dual coaching identity:


Rattlers women’s basketball coach plays a key role coaching junior program at Medicine Hat Tennis Club


“That is the one I went back to Edmonton with and started playing with. I competed in my first tournament not too much longer after that. I won a couple rounds, and it kind of got me hooked into playing the circuit.”


McLester said at one time growing up that he was a better tennis player than he was a basketball player.


After graduating from the University of Alberta, McLester pursued his career in coaching basketball. He came to Medicine Hat in 2003 and coached the Rattlers men’s basketball program for four seasons, before moving over to coach the women’s team.


By DARREN STEINKE


It kind of happened by chance, but Jason McLester has taken on a duel identity as a coach.


The 37-year-old is best known as the head coach of the Medicine Hat College Rattlers women’s basketball team. He has held this post since 2007 and guided the Rattlers to a wildcard berth at nationals in his first season with the team.


Besides being a mentor on the basketball court, McLester has taken a very active role at the Medicine Hat Tennis Club as a coach in the junior program.


“Basketball is my job, and also my passion,” said McLester. “Tennis is just something I do that I enjoy.


“Tennis has been really good to me, so I feel like I should give back a little bit. It has been neat to step into a different foray. I know that my coaching education and my work here at the college helps me be a better coach for those kids as well.


“Competition is competition, whether it is five-on-five or one-on-one. We talk a lot about those types of things and putting those scenarios together. It has been really enjoyable.”


While he had a serious background in playing and coaching basketball in his life, McLester also has a strong background involved in tennis.


He played the sport seriously from the age of 12 to 15 training at the Royal Glenora Club in Edmonton. After about six years away from the sport, McLester made the tennis team at the University of Alberta and played there for a short time.


His interest in the sport came along rather innocently, when he was visiting his grandparents in Florida at age 12. At 8 a.m. each morning, the seniors at the complex his grandparents lived at packed that place’s four tennis courts.


McLester showed up to watch, and the seniors offered him a chance to play. He played every morning for two weeks and broke the first wooden racket he used.


Before he returned to Edmonton with his parents, one of the seniors gave McLester an aluminum racket.


“I still have that racket to this day,” said McLester. “It weighs about six pounds opposed to the ones now.


100 2014 REPORT ON SOUTHEAST ALBERTA


When he arrived in Medicine Hat, McLester started to take up tennis again at the Medicine Hat Tennis Club. He would team up to play doubles matches with Bren Ennis for fun.


Eventually, officials at the club asked McLester to help coach the junior program. He started to help a little bit at first and got hooked.


McLester has worked with the elite junior program at the club for five years, and saw local product Raymond Weich earn a National Collegiate Athletic Association scholarship to play for the Cardinal Stritch University tennis team in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.


“I am really proud of what we’ve got going at the tennis club,” said McLester. “They run a great tennis club.


“They’ve got fantastic people motivated to do a great job. It feels like it has culminated with Raymond Weich getting a tennis scholarship down in the States.


“I got to hit with him, when he came back over Christmas and ask him how it is going. It was neat to share that experience and be a part of it with him. I am really proud of him for reaching that goal.”


Last summer, McLester focused on working with the under-6 and under-8 junior players at the tennis club.


He admits that his schedule during the year is busy. He is focused on the Rattlers during the fall and winter, and when summer comes around, McLester’s vacation time is dedicated to coaching tennis for five out of the seven days a week.


Coaching tennis also comes with a side bonus for McLester, because he gets to spend more time with his six-year-old son Grayson and three-year-old son Lachlan. Both are playing the sport, and McLester said that would keep him hooked into maintaining his busy coaching life.


“Where I am at with it is as long as my kids want to play tennis I will coach,” said McLester. “I will follow them through and be part of their lives through tennis.


“If they want to step away, then maybe I will look to step away and do whatever they are doing and be dad and be there for them. Right now, my sons love tennis, so dad will continue to coach them and be part of their lives that way.


“If they make a different decision, then I will look to be apart of whatever they are doing.” ■


R By ALEX MCCUAIG


oy Wilson’s place in history is among those who can truly be named scholar, not because of a self-identification with the title or because it was one bestowed upon him. The title fits because the man simply was everything the word every meant in its definition which


spans the history of the English language and its meaning that goes beyond words on a piece of paper.


Authenticity can sometimes be a personality trait that is difficult to ascertain. The mark of a truly genuine person is that such an attribute is never questioned.


To see Wilson in his office, surrounded by books, old hi-fi and new computer, papers, pictures and notes or to know the man throughout his teaching career and life, one can’t come to any other conclusion that Wilson was the real deal.


Born in 1937 in Regina, Sask., Wilson moved to Edmonton and the University of Alberta where he received his alphabet soup of scholastic honours, culminating in his doctorate from the school.


In 1960, he began his lifetime passion for teaching — while maintaining his veracious appetite for learning — in Saskatoon before moving to Alberta and, eventually, to Medicine Hat in 1973.


It was in the Hat where Wilson found his stride as a educator, historian and author whose infectious dedication to his trade saw thousands of his students take up a career in teaching.


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