Lowell Cormier has left a legacy through his impressive leadership– from coaching school and community teams for more than five decades, to fundraising for and overseeing the development of sport facilities that make New Waterford the envy of many provincial communities – yet he stresses that everything he has accomplished as a builder of sport has not been an individual effort.

“I’ve worked with fantastic athletes, their parents and community people who’ve made such major contributions to any success I’ve had,” says the retired teacher and school principal from New Waterford. A stellar athlete as a youngster and teenager, Cormier had great genes from his dad, Joe “Pounder” Cormier, a star at high levels of baseball and hockey.

Cormier excelled in every sport. He played basketball for the New Waterford Strands who won the 1970 Maritime Senior Championship. Superb in junior and senior baseball, he helped Sydney Steel Kings win a silver medal at the 1974 Canadian Senior Championships. In soccer, he stood out at Mount Carmel High and Xavier College.

He started coaching baseball at 13, a year after he left Little League where the upper age limit was 12.”Our coach was 19 and wanted to play baseball himself,” recalls Cormier. “He asked for my help (I was going to be coaching guys I had played with the year before) and he really set me up. He left the team, and I was it. I coached baseball and/or basketball for 47 of the next 49 years. “He went on to coach baseball and/or basketball for 47 of the next 49 years. His bantam and juvenile baseball teams won four provincial, one Maritime, and one Eastern Canadian title. His basketball teams at Xavier College, College of Cape Breton, Breton Education Centre, and Cape Breton University (where he was associate coach) won two provincial and one Atlantic University title.

Cormier ended his extensive coaching career in 2010. “Now I coach only from the stands and people say I’m better at that,” he laughs.

After attending Mount Carmel School in New Waterford from Primary through Grade 12, Lowell taught there for 34 years. He worked in special education with mentally challenged youngsters, mostly in self-contained classrooms, unlike today’s integrated system with students of all learning capabilities in one classroom. He was principal there for six years, retiring after spending 53 years at one school.

Cormier’s continuing community leadership shaped New Waterford so much that his impact was recognized by a town street being named Lowell Cormier Avenue.

Old friend Russ McNeil, who coached Cormier in high school basketball, calls him a “great organizer, with a wonderful sense of humour.”

“He’s well respected. People of New Waterford love him. He was elected, unopposed to Cape Breton council.”

In 1980, while coaching basketball at BEC, Cormier formed the New Waterford Minor Basketball Association. The original $10 fee per player is the same today. In 1982, he founded the annual Coal Bowl Basketball Tournament that brings high school teams from across Canada to Cape Breton for a week of hoops, touring, education, and camaraderie.

“I learned how to ask for money from my mother, Anna,” says Cormier. “She’d get on the phone to raise money for her kids to go to basketball camp in the 60s. I have no qualms asking for money. One donor once said when debating whether to give, “We may as well give it to him now because he’ll just keep coming back.”

Don Blackwood was on the original Coal Bowl board with Cormier. “He never takes no for an answer. He was an aggressive coach and is that way in helping run the Coal Bowl. Lowell has always been a winner.”

The biggest challenge Cormier faced with the Coal Bowl was convincing the school board to move students from a wing of the school to set up bunk beds for the tournament.

“We house and feed the kids in the school and they go downstairs to the gym for the games. We take them to local sites to enhance their education. That, too, was a fight with the board because we were taking kids out of school for five days. We sold the idea of the education and social component.”

Since 2001, Cormier led the drive for a turf soccer field, outdoor ball hockey rink, basketball court, and fitness facility, and refurbishment of an outdoor tennis court complex projects that cost almost $2 million. He has spearheaded a long list of successful projects, served on many boards and executives, and has received many awards. Cormier admits, “I never thought of receiving recognition. These have all been things I was having a ball doing.”

Bio Courtesy of Joel Jacobson