A new era: Lakehead University Thunderwolves welcome new men's basketball head coach

The Lakehead Thunderwolves men's basketball team has their home opener this weekend, so we thought it was time to check in with their new coach, John Campbell. All right, again, today it's all skills. So you're fairly new. This is your first season with Lakehead. What have you been feeling since you got here and met the team? Well, it's been a lot of excitement. I'd been sort of retired from coaching for a couple of years, and so to be back in the gym every day has really provided a lot of enthusiasm them back for the game. And then in this situation, the combination of meeting a whole new roster of players and getting to work with them on a daily basis, as well as really being welcomed into the Thunder Bay community, I think it's a pretty unique environment, you know, across university sport in Canada. And so I think it makes it a little more exciting to be here. You mentioned exciting. So are you familiar with the whole Thunderdome reputation? Yeah, I think I've had the pleasure or maybe less pleasure in coaching here as an opposing coach, you know, several times, you know, both in my time when I was coaching at Laurentian as well as when I was at the University of Toronto. So yeah, it's such a, again, it's a unique environment right now in Canada for university sport and it's so special for the athletes, I think, and you know, I think that makes it really exciting to be here. You are working with a squad that did have a fair number of graduates last year. So you know some newer players, what are you thinking for the year ahead? Yeah I think you know the combination of you know important players graduating and then a change in coaching really creates a new atmosphere and environment for all the players I think so you lose a little bit of the institutional knowledge that sort of goes on year to year but the players so far have been really open-minded into some changes we're trying to maintain a lot of the things that they've been doing over the past years, but players are moving into different roles, players are being asked to fill different sort of responsibilities on the court. So I think it's a bit of a work in progress in a lot of ways, but I think when we play together and we play really hard, I think there's a lot of talent and I think we might be able to surprise some people.