Thames Hall
The 1950s were a time of great athletic success for Western and the decade began with the construction of Thames Hall. The cornerstone for the building was laid in February 1949 and Thames Hall officially opened at the 143rd Convocation of the University on October 22, 1949. The building provided much needed athletic facilities and classroom space and the expansion allowed for the creation of a four-year course offering in Physical, Health, and Recreation Education as well as additional athletic faculty and staff. Further facilities within Thames Hall opened in March of 1950 and included the Spencer Memorial Pool, and a gymnasium named for Colonel George Eric Reid.
The expanded facilities allowed more opportunities for women’s athletics at Western. In 1948 Miss Jean Ramsay became the first female faculty member of the new Honours Physical Education and Western’s first women’s volleyball coach. However, space was still limited, and women’s teams often struggled to gain equal access to practice times and space. When a group of women wanted to start an ice hockey team in the 1950s, their request for funding to pay for ice time was initially rejected. Undeterred, they donated their blood for money to pay for ice rental. When athletic director J. P. Metras saw that they had scheduled their practices at 6am and were obviously serious, he changed his mind and provided some money for the team.
Robert McFarlane
Bob McFarlane achieved more than any other track athlete in UWO history. During his career at Western, McFarlane never lost to a Canadian runner. In a period of four years from 1946 to 1950, he set seven national records as well as being a member of Mustang relay teams that set four national marks. He was intercollegiate and Canadian champion on numerous occasions and most often in one-day meets he would run two or three races and achieve world class times. In 1948, several Mustang runners including Bob and his brother Don, Bill Larochelle, and Jack Perry, were selected to represent Canada at the Olympic Games in London, England.
Basketball
With the return to intercollegiate competition following World War II and the much needed expansion to facilities, both the men’s and women’s basketball teams were able to thrive. The men’s basketball team experienced a championship streak from 1945-1956. Adding basketball to his coaching schedule, J.P. Metras took the team on the road and moved several home games to the more spacious London Arena. Away games were added against teams in the United States. The senior Mustangs won the league championship ten times and shared the title once with Assumption College. In the first seven post-war seasons the Mustangs won 43 of 44 games in league play.
Mary Lou Dresser
Mary-Lou Dresser was an outstanding athlete at Western before she became a member of the athletic faculty and head basketball coach. She excelled as a guard on the basketball team from 1955-56 to 1958-59 helping the team capture two Bronze Baby Championships. She also competed in track and field and volleyball playing on the Senior Championship team in her final year. She won the F.W.P Jones Award in 1958-59 for Western’s Most Outstanding Female Athlete. Dresser soon returned to Western and her teams were unstoppable. Throughout the 1960s, her teams won a total of eight championships.
Mike Yuhasz
Mike Yuhasz was a star football player, basketball player and wrestler at Western in the late 1940’s and was part of the first graduating class of the new Physical, Health, and Recreation Education program. He won the Intermediate Wrestling Championship in 1947-48 and 1948-49 at 155 pounds and began coaching the wrestling team while he was still a student in 1949. Yuhasz returned to coach wrestling and led the Senior team to Intercollegiate Championships in 1955-56 and 1959-60.
Football
During the late 1940s and early ’50s interest in intercollegiate football grew across Ontario. Western experienced both a 2,200 seat expansion to J.W. Little Stadium and the installation of an electronic scoreboard. Senior Intercollegiate games were also broadcasted by radio stations CFPL London and CBL Toronto. During this time, Bob Gage began reporting on Western sporting events. Having graduated from Assumption College in Windsor, then an affiliate of Western, Gage worked as a reporter covering amateur and university sports from 1949 until his retirement in 1982. His coverage of the Mustangs was well respected and his presence a regular facet of Western athletics long after his retirement.
From the end of World War II to 1960, the Mustangs won eight Yates Cup championship titles including a sensational win over Toronto when a last-minute pass from quarterback Don Getty secured the Senior Intercollegiate championship in 1953. With ever growing interest, the seating capacity at J.W. Little Stadium was again expanded to 3,080 seats in the student section in 1960. At the close of the decade in 1969, J.P. Metras announced his retirement from coaching football after 34 seasons.
Jack Fairs
Jack Fairs enrolled at Western in 1942 and played football and basketball during his time as a student. Fairs returned to Western in 1947 to join the athletic staff as a teacher and coach of the Western Colts in basketball and football as well as serving as an assistant football coach to the senior Mustangs team. Fairs assumed squash coaching duties in 1962, where he brought new teaching methods, introduced strict training and a more organized team structure. His changes produced immediate and lasting success as Fairs led the Mustangs to an Intercollegiate Squash Championship in 1963-64.
Elfrida Carlsone Kukainis Berzins
Known affectionately as Mrs. B, Elfrida Berzins coached numerous women’s sports at Western from 1952-1970. Born in Latvia in 1904, Berzins became a national champion in basketball, volleyball, and cross-country skiing and held national records for a number of track and field events and represented Latvia at the 1926 and 1928 Women’s Olympics. She moved to Canada in 1948 and became an instructor at Western in 1952 where she started coaching women’s volleyball. Her teams were unstoppable with an intercollegiate championship streak of eleven years from 1952 to 1963. In 1956 Berzins became Director of Women’s Athletics and continued to coach track and field, basketball and archery as well as teach in the Faculty of Physical Education.
During Berzins’ tenure, the 1960s saw changes to the Women’s Intercollegiate Athletic Union (WIAU). With more universities and more women looking to participate in sports, a series of meetings were held between 1962 and 1963 to discuss setting up a women’s division of the men’s Ontario Intercollegiate Athletic Association (OIAA). Wanting to retain autonomy from men’s athletics, the WIAU hosted a special meeting in 1965 and established the East-West Conference in Intercollegiate Athletics (EWCIA), which later changed its name to the Ontario-Quebec Women’s Conference in Intercollegiate Athletics (OQWCIA) in 1967.
Yvette Walton
Yvette Walton took over coaching volleyball from Mrs. B in 1964 and guided the team to a share of first place with the University of Toronto, bringing Western’s consecutive championships to twelve. Coach Walton was an outstanding athlete at Western. She was a member of four championship volleyball teams as well as three championship basketball teams in the late 1950s. She won the F.W.P Jones trophy as outstanding athlete in 1959-60 for her multisport excellence in archery, volleyball, basketball and track and field.
Fran Wigston (Eberhard)
Fran Wigston was a star athlete at Western from 1954-55 to 1956-57. She played on two championship basketball teams, three championship volleyball teams, was nearly unbeatable in track and field and also competed on the swimming team in 1956-57.
