By Jason Pugh, Northwestern State Associate Athletic Director for Media Relations; featured graphic by Brad Welborn, NSU Sports Information
NATCHITOCHES – During Jim Wells’ time as Northwestern State’s baseball coach, the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame was housed in Prather Coliseum – a long way physically from the structure at the end of Front Street that now houses the Pelican State’s athletic legends.
While that building opened nearly two decades after Wells did his own construction job with the Demon baseball program, Wells will enter it in June as part of the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2027, a group that was announced Wednesday morning.
Wells and the other eight competitive-ballot inductees – along with three additional award winners who will be announced at a later date – will be enshrined during the 2027 Hall of Fame weekend June 24-26 in Natchitoches. He becomes the 10th competitive-ballot inductee from Northwestern, which also has produced three Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism honorees.
“I’m trying to take it all in right now,” said Wells, a Bossier City native whose home-state coaching career included stops as the head coach at Shreveport’s Loyola College Prep and as an assistant on Skip Bertman’s early LSU staffs.
“I sure look forward to it, and my family really looks forward to it. Thank God it’s 10 months away before we have to figure it out.”
It may take Wells, who coached Northwestern from 1990-1994 before a 16-year run as the head coach at Alabama, most of the time between now and the June 26 induction ceremony to work through the emotions of returning to a place that means so much to him personally and professionally.
That timeframe stands in stark comparison to how quickly Wells put his stamp on the programs he led and the short amount of time he turned those teams into juggernauts.
Taking over a Demon program that had struggled through nine straight losing seasons and 11 without a winning season, Wells engineered a 17-win turnaround in his first season and delivered a Southland Conference title in 1991, his second season.
That title began a run of three league championships in a four-year span.
“I remember interviews when he got the job where they said it was a four-to-five-year overhaul before we would be competing on a conference level, and we won the conference in our second year,” said Glenn Maynor, one of Wells’ first recruits who pitched four seasons for the Demons from 1990-93. “We won it in (19)91, then we won it again in ’93, which was my senior year, and they won it again the next year.”
Wells’ Natchitoches turnaround was based on the twin ideals of work ethic and attention to detail. It resulted in a remarkable 192-89 overall mark in five seasons at the helm of the Demons, a program-record .683 winning percentage, and three of Northwestern’s nine SLC regular-season titles.
It did not take long for word of Wells’ success to spread and to serve as a recruiting tool.
“I’d seen what was going on down there in Natchitoches through my brother,” said Demon All-American pitcher Reggie Gatewood, whose late brother, Jim, was part of Wells’ coaching staff. “After my second year at another D-I school, I knew I wanted to be part of it. I called my brother, and he said, ‘Whatever you think is going on here, if there’s an opposite to what you’re experiencing right now, that would be it, but just so you know, it’s not easy. It’s demanding. It’s physically and mentally tough. He’s focused on one thing, that’s winning.’
“That’s why I will walk through flames to get there. I knew he was going to get the best out of me. He was going to make me do things that normally I wouldn’t want to do, like run those extra miles, do all the physical things.”
Gatewood helped the Demons earn an at-large NCAA Tournament berth in 1994 – one of two regional berths Wells help the Demons land.
Across 20 years as a head coach at Northwestern and Alabama, Wells posted an 817-411 overall mark, collecting 14 overall NCAA Regional berths (1991 and 1994 at NSU), five conference titles (three SLC titles with the Demons) and three College World Series berths at Alabama. In 1997, Wells led the Crimson Tide to the CWS title game against his mentor and former boss, Skip Bertman, and LSU.
Wells’ impact on the Demon program has continued. Prior to Wells’ arrival, the program was 659-867-14, a 43.2 percent mark. In the 32 years since he left for Alabama following the 1994 season, Northwestern has won 55.1 percent of its games.
“It’s such a proud baseball program, and he started that,” said former Demon skipper Mitch Gaspard, whose first full-time college coaching job came under Wells at Northwestern and succeeded him as Alabama’s head coach in 2010.
“Obviously, he had a formula of how he wanted to get the program built up and start the winning tradition there. It was in the relentless way he went about his work. I owe my entire career to Jim Wells – the places I got to go and the things I got to do – were all because of Jim. I’ll never forget, I’m 23 years old and sitting in the stands at Texarkana Junior College – ironically Dave Van Horn (who succeeded Wells at Northwestern) was the head coach at Texarkana. Jim said, ‘Hey, I think I’m going to get my first full-time assistant at Northwestern State.’ He said, ‘Would you be interested?’ My old high school coach was one of the assistants at USL (now UL Lafayette), Emrick Jagneaux. He said, ‘You need to get with that guy. He’s hot and he’s going places.’”
Those places are landmarked with trophies and reputations that helped land Wells in the N-Club Hall of Fame, the Louisiana Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame and now the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.
“I think he’s one of the most underrated college coaches of the last 30 years,” Gaspard said. “That’s just how good he was. He always did it with class. You talk to people in that era, guys like Mike Bianco, and those guys will tell you the same thing. Even though he’s in multiple Halls of Fame, and now the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, I don’t know that he ever got the flowers he deserved for his coaching prowess and how he built programs.”
Wells’ stint as the head coach at Loyola College Prep in Shreveport started his career, one that kicked into gear when Wells joined Skip Bertman’s LSU staff, and the lessons Wells learned in Baton Rouge made their way with him to Natchitoches.
Bertman, who passed away in August, will be in Wells’ thoughts as he joins the shrine that already includes his mentor, competitor, contemporary and friend.
“Skip’s not far from any of our minds, those of us who have been around him,” Wells said. “Certainly so soon after his passing, I still haven’t quite gotten over that.”
Some 30-plus years after leaving Natchitoches to resurrect another program, a piece of Wells will permanently be part of the community that means so much to him and his family.
“I tell (my family) that I want to go back home (to Louisiana), and I’m still trying,” he said. “I’m still trying to get back there. It’s been almost 40 years it seems like. Louisiana is just so special to me, and home is so special to me. Bossier and Natchitoches, where my family and my wife’s family is from, that makes it much more special.”