
JULIUS
GOLDMAN
ATHLETE
BASKETBALL
CLASS OF 1990
Julius Goldman was a versatile and highly successful multisport athlete who accumulated a total of 36 individual and team championship medals over the course of his career. He was involved in Canadian Olympic basketball.
Goldman was born in Mayesville, South Carolina, on September 22, 1910.
During his school days, Goldman’s academic performance matched his athletic achievements. In his final year at Windsor-Walkerville Technical High School, a bonus for good attendance propped his academic average up to an incredible 101%.
On the athletic side, Goldman was in 1925 named the Border Cities High School Intermediate Individual champion.
At the tender age of 14, Goldman played for the 18th Battalion, a championship softball team that played indoors at the Windsor Armouries.
A few years later, Goldman’s Walkerville Chicklets were 1928 Ontario Amateur Baseball Association Junior Champions. The championship is understood to be Windsor’s first baseball title. Goldman batted .455 from the cleanup position.
In 1929-30, still a young man, Goldman played for the Ontario Champion Windsor Alumni Senior Men’s basketball team. With Goldman, the team reached the Canadian semifinals, losing to Acadia University.
After high school, Goldman starred in four sports at Detroit Tech. During the 1929-30 basketball season, he led all scorers in the state of Michigan with 236 points. Few players in American college basketball were able to better that total.
During the 1931-32 season, Goldman played football and basketball in the Michigan-Ontario Collegiate Conference, achieving All-Star status in both sports.
He was also a member of the team during the 1931-32 season, when it captured the Ontario title. Goldman’s squad reached the Eastern Canadian semifinals that year, losing out to Saint John New Brunswick. Goldman played a further season with the Alumni in 1932-33, achieving greater success. The team won the Ontario and Eastern Canadian Championships before falling to the Victoria Blue Ribbons in the Canadian Finals.
In his mid-twenties, Goldman achieved further honours with several local basketball clubs. For the 1935-36 season, he was a mainstay on the Windsor Ford V-8s team that won the Canadian Senior Men’s Basketball title. The following year, Goldman played for the Windsor Alumni, winning the Ontario and Eastern Canadian championships before losing to the University of British Columbia in the Canadian Finals. In 1937-38, Goldman claimed the Ontario championship and advanced to the Eastern Canadian semi-finals with the Windsor Moose Lodge Senior Men’s team.
Later in life, Goldman coached the Detroit Institute of Technology basketball team. During the team’s most successful spell, it won 19 straight games, including notable victories over the University of Detroit and Bowling Green. Goldman’s teams won an impressive 66% of their games during his coaching career.
Goldman would have represented Canada in Olympic basketball if not for a since-repelled rule that prohibited athletes from representing a country other than their nation of birth. He did serve as Assistant Coach of Canada’s national basketball team, which won a silver medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
He also had a significant role to play in international basketball reform. In 1936, as Canada’s representative on the International Basketball Rules Committee, Goldman introduced the eventually successful motion to eliminate the centre jump after each basket.
As a means of recognizing his historical academic and athletic brilliance, Goldman was named W.D. Lowe Secondary School’s Student Athlete of the Half-Century.
Goldman passed away in Detroit on February 19, 2001.




