Norm Jones
Basketball (1999)

Norm Jones was a longtime coach of swimming and diving, men's and women's basketball and men's and women's softball in Saskatoon.

Norm was born in Cupar in 1910, where one of his pastimes was participating in the Boy Scout movement. He moved to Saskatoon in 1922, where he and his mother stand in front of the seen here with the first car he ever owned, and he worked at The Modern Press as a commercial pressman for 40 years.

The Avenue H Pool, later to be known as the Riversdale pool, was a favorite stopping place for Norm, who won a provincial diving championship and then helped many others win provincial titles and helped four win national crowns.

A prize pupil was Audrey Turner, who was second in the Canadian women's diving championships from 1939 to 1945 and then won three straight national championships, 1946 through 1948. She was inducted into the Saskatoon Sports Hall of Fame in 1987.

The Arcade Royals won the 1943 Saskatchewan intermediate women's basketball championship. Audrey Turner Jones, then his wife, was one of the players on the team.

In women's softball, he coached the Shasta Spartans from 1945 through 1952 and also coached the Clippers and the diamonds. Often it was his development of a team, which kept the women's league alive.

One of Norm's first ventures into men's basketball was with the Toilers, starting in 1940 and building through the next four years. He was also coach of the Burrs when they won the provincial intermediate title during the 1945 season.

He was back at the helm of the Toilers in 1946 and this newspaper advertisement heralds the team's appearance against the famed Victoria Dominoes in the western Canadian finals. The Toilers and one of their players, John Clark, was signed by Victoria the next year.

Norm coached a string of strong Saskatoon Navy teams from 1947 until 1955, often taking them into the provincial men's finals.

Because of his work with many teams, Jones was honored with a lifetime achievement award by the Saskatoon Basketball Association in 1966.  He died on Oct. 11, 1972.