Not quite the retiring type; after nearly a half-century at the helm, Mount St. Mary's coach Jim Phelan shows no signs of slowing down

Basketball Digest, May, 2002 by Tom Worgo

FOR MOUNT ST. MARY'S MEN'S basketball coach Jim Phelan, the past few years have been the most difficult of his 48-year head coaching career--all but one spent at the tiny Maryland school.

Since 1999, the 72-year-old Phelan, college basketball's winningest active coach, endured a major heath scare--prostate cancer--compounded by four 20-loss seasons.

Even so, retirement for Phelan seems a couple of years away--at least. He's coached in more games (1,327--exact number) than anyone.

"I feel great, better than I have in years, Phelan says. "I'm 72, but I feel like I am 52. I feel no inclinations toward retirement I don't know how long I am going to be here. I still feel strongly about the game."

Phelan put any doubts about his enthusiasm to rest a year ago. Even while undergoing radiation treatment for cancer in the fall of 2000, he appeared on the sidelines for all but two Mountaineers games. In all, Phelan has missed just four contests in a career that has spanned six decades, and he says he has completely recovered.

"I get tested every six months, and recently the blood tests were so low they showed the cancer is in total remission or gone," he says.

Whatever thoughts Phelan directed toward retirement were due more to losing than cancer. Cancer "doesn't make me think of retiring anymore, but having a bad season certainly wears on you," he says.

Few expect his final game to come anytime soon, though.

"He will coach until he falls down or physically can't do it anymore," says Cliff Warren, a Georgia Tech assistant who played and coached under Phelan from 1986 to 1997. "He is full of piss and vinegar. He is a very fiery, very feisty coach."

Not to mention a very successful one.

Known for the bow ties he wears during games, Phelan has little or nothing left to accomplish. He ranks fourth all-time (819) in wins behind North Carolina's Dean Smith (879), Kentucky's Adolph Rupp (876), and Clarence "Big House" Gaines of Winston Salem (827).

"Having gone through it for 48 years, what you feel is how lucky you are that you survived all those seasons," says Phelan, who has five children and nine grandchildren. "Having a family and kids really helps you get through the hardest times. They were great for me. They are what took my mind off basketball."

Phelan's 1962 Mountaineers squad won the Division II National Championship, and since moving up to Division I in 1987, Mount St. Mary's has appeared in the NCAA Tournament twice.

Phelan has been nominated for the Basketball Hall of Fame twice, although he has not been elected. Phelan remains philosophical about the slight from Springfield, however.

"It's a great trivia question," he says. "Who is the only coach with 800 wins who is not in the Hall of Fame? There's only one."

However, Warren says Phelan "could care less" about the attention and publicity he receives. "He has a room full of trophies and a closet full of other stuff," the Georgia Tech assistant says.

Phelan's toughness comes from growing up in Philadelphia and later serving in the Marine Corps during the early 1950s. "He will tell you he got in fights in South Philly," Warren says.

Phelan's stubbornness served him well in 1992, when Mount St. Mary's then-President, Robert Wickenheiser, tried to force him quit after 8-19 and 6-22 seasons. Wickenheiser even enlisted Gen. P.X. Kelley, a former commandant of the Marine Corps who was serving on the school's board of visitors, to try pressuring Phelan to step down.

The coach's response? "Marines don't run away from adversity.

"There was a thing about the president wanting me to retire," Phelan says. "I told him I really wasn't ready. I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. I thought we were going to have a pretty good team that year, and we did.

"We rallied and came back, and I was voted coach of the year. It's going on 10 years and a lot of good things have happened. We went to the NCAA Tournament twice and the NIT once. That's a pretty good feeling."

Ask Phelan. what has kept him at Mount St. Mary's, a 1,400-student Catholic liberal arts college located south of Gettysburg, Pa., for so long, and why he continues to coach long after retirement age, and his answer is simple: quality of life.

Not that he hasn't interviewed for other jobs over the years, most notably with the Baltimore Bullets in the early 1970s.

"Perhaps the job I came closest to getting was with the Bullets," Phelan says. "They ended up hiring a guy from San Francisco who played in the league, but he lasted something like three games."

Looking back, Phelan says the best time to move on would have been the early 1960s. "We won a national championship in 1962," he explains. "I was 32, and that would have been the time to go."

He doesn't seem like a man consumed by regrets, though. He and Dottle, his wife of 47 years, still live in the house they built near Mount St. Mary's Emmitsburg campus in 1960.

In the spring, after basketball season ends, Phelan stays active with frequent trips to the racetrack, and playing golf and tennis.