Hall of Fame
The first class of the Harry Green Bridgeport High School Athletics Hall of Fame ends where it started: With the school’s first-ever state championship team in 1955.
But when Jim McDonald left Bridgeport after a stellar three-sport career that included starting at end on that groundbreaking squad and making an all-state basketball team that included the likes of Jerry West and Willie Akers, he was just getting started.
McDonald received a full basketball scholarship to West Virginia Wesleyan and led the nation in scoring, earning small college All-American honors and eventually being inducted into the Bobcats’ athletic Hall of Fame.
He then was drafted in 1960 by the NBA’s Cincinnati Royals (now the Sacramento Kings) in the 21st round and was offered pro contracts in both basketball and baseball.
But leadership was McDonald’s passion.
After coaching high school for a few years, McDonald was hired as the first men’s basketball coach at then-Edinboro State University in 1962 and also coached golf.
He won 181 basketball games, a school record that stood until Greg Walcavich’s tenure between 1989-2013 and is still the second-most in Fighting Scots history, and also coached internationally, leading the United States to gold in the Hapoel Games in Israel.
McDonald then served as Edinboro’s athletic director for 13 years, his most notable hire by far two-time Summer Olympics wrestling gold medalist and three-time world champion Bruce Baumgartner as wrestling coach.
“I told Jim in (the interview) that I’d be here for three years,” Baumgartner told the Erie Times-News in 2020. “I retired 36 years later.”
Although Edinboro is Division II in most sports, they moved to Division I for wrestling under McDonald’s leadership and remain one of the country’s top programs, producing four national champions.
“(He) is responsible for laying the foundation for Edinboro Athletics and putting the Fighting Scots on the map,” Dr. Katherine Robbins, Edinboro’s athletic director said when McDonald passed in 2020. “In his tenure, he started summer camps, implemented the scholarship program that raised over 6 million dollars and established our Division I wrestling program.”
Baumgartner succeeded McDonald as the Edinboro AD.
“Jim became somewhat of a mentor to me. He was just a wonderful man,” Baumgartner told the Times-News.
McDonald was inducted into Edinboro’s Hall of Fame in 1995.
But he found a higher calling and gave up his AD position in 1994 to focus on mission work, eventually founding Meeting God in Missions.
According to MGM’s website, “in 1998, Jim found himself standing in a Dominican sugar cane village holding a little Haitian girl in his arms. As he looked down at her it dawned on him that this was better than any success he had previously achieved. It couldn’t get any better than this!”
