Jim Davidson plans to establish new mentality around Crimson Wave Women’s Basketball
First-year head coach Jim Davidson has retired from teaching to focus and continue his 30+ years of coaching with the CCSJ women’s basketball team. While this is Davidson’s inaugural college coaching season, he was successful at the high school level and hopes to transition his winning ways to a struggling college program.
Whiting, IN. – As the 9th Calumet College of St. Joseph women's basketball head coach of all-time, Jim Davidson wants to establish a new culture and mindset within the program.
Calumet College announced Davidson as the women's basketball coach on October 2, 2023 and on October 3, his first day of practice with the team, he walked into a unique situation. At the time, CCSJ was on a 55-game losing streak, dating back to its last win on January 15, 2020 when the Crimson Wave beat Judson 60-49.
Despite this being his first-year coaching college basketball, Davidson was not apprehensive about his new coaching position. In fact, he was ecstatic about the challenges and focused on what it would take to steer the struggling women's program in the right direction.
"The first thing we must do as a group is change the culture and attitude and that's hard," Davidson said. "We have players that hadn't won a game in college until this season so we have to break the mentality of accepting things not going well or not playing hard or losing by 50. This is not where we want to be."
Coming to CCSJ, Davidson brings 34 years of coaching experience, including 10 years as the Munster girls' varsity basketball head coach. Outside of being the varsity basketball coach for a decade, Davidson also was the varsity girls golf head coach for nine years and the varsity softball head coach for seven years. While leading the softball team to two sectional championships and the girls golf team to five conference championships, one of Davidson's most recent and notable accomplishments was leading the girls' basketball team to a sectional title the 2019-20 season.
During his tenure coaching high school sports, Davidson was also a teacher, so the focus couldn't solely just be sports. After a few conversations with athletic director and softball coach David Lopez, Davidson was on board to retire as a teacher and fulfill his aspirations of being a full-time head coach.
"To me it was a win-win to come here," Davidson said. "I was already trying to figure out when I could get out of teaching a couple years down the line, but this opportunity came about and allowed me to focus on basketball 24/7."
Davidson admits that there are challenges as a coach moving up from the high school level to the college level, as he has had to adjust to the speed of the game, the level of competition and talent, as well as the recruiting process and financial literacy required of a college coach.
Being hired with less than a month before the team's first game of the season, Davidson's focus and coaching tactics have still impacted the women's team as they've won two games so far, which is more than what the team has the won the past three years combined.
Looking ahead, Davidson will lose senior point guard Destiny Hughes after this season, but does have a roster consisting of seven freshman that should return next year. Davidson said his narrative to returning players and pitch to recruits will be simple.
"If you want to have an immediate impact, you can do that here," Davidson said. "We're a program right now that's struggling and we're trying to change the culture. Do you want to be a part of helping us make that change? … Hopefully we can find some kids that are interested in doing that."