ELMA — John Donahue, the hard-driving coach who won nearly 400 high school basketball games and became the architect of Elma’s legendary “Blue Buzzsaw” boys basketball teams, died last weekend.

Donahue was 89. A celebration of life service is scheduled for 1 p.m. Aug. 26 at Saint Martin’s University’s Worthington Conference Center.

During a 27-year career as Elma’s head basketball coach, Donahue posted a 394-239 record. His teams won five district championships and the 1964 state Class A title.

His record, however, represented only the tip of the iceberg. Donahue’s style changed the culture of area prep basketball as few coaches have done.

In an era when basketball was much slower-paced than today, Donahue’s Elma teams were noted for a relentlessly up-tempo offense that inspired the nickname “The Blue Buzzsaw.”

“(He had) run-and-shoot teams of speedy little guys,” said former Daily World editor/publisher John Hughes, who covered many of Donahue’s best teams in the 1960s and ’70s. “Elma never really had any real height behind (standout center) Ron Sheets…The team was enormously fun to watch. They were crowd-pleasing teams with all sorts of charisma. The years I covered Elma basketball were some of the best years of my career in terms of fun.”

Conditioning was another Eagle hallmark during their glory years.

“Elma tired you out by the fourth quarter,” said long-time Elma public address announcer Jack Prince, the captain and MVP on Donahue’s first Eagle team. “The kids were in that good of shape.”

Fun-loving away from the court, Donahue was a no-nonsense disciplinarian on the bench. He once benched all-state guard Herb Moxley for eating too much popcorn prior to a game.

So resistant to off-court hoopla that he even refused to allow his players to run onto the court for pre-game introductions until the final few years of his career, Donahue was relatively impassive during the contests. He betrayed his nervousness only by constantly peeling off sections of a roll of tape he carried during games.

“Everybody was fearful of that guy,” Moxley said in a 1983 interview. “He was like a grizzly bear. You’d better be ready to go to do what he told you. If you didn’t, you’d be carrying a ball above your head for 15 minutes.”

“He was very tough on kids,” Jack Prince added. “The way he coached in those days, you couldn’t coach today.”

Yet Donahue was also famously loyal to his players.

“His players loved him,” Hughes said. “He pushed them hard and demanded a lot from them but most of them just thrived under that. You had to run when you played for Donahue. In return, what you got was a friend for life.”

“He was fair but he was tough,” recalled former longtime Eagle manager and scorekeeper Lee Thompson.

Rick Slettedahl, the leading scorer on Donahue’s 1964 state championship team, said in a 1983 interview that the coach could be surprisingly flexible at times.

“In a sense, I experienced more freedom with him then under other coaches,” said Slettedahl, who later played at the University of Washington. “He kind of did that with the team, too. He didn’t hold the reins tight.”

Certainly, Donahue was unafraid of creating a star system. Slettedahl, Moxley, Sheets and future Seattle SuperSonic Rod “The Rifle” Derline were among the standouts who flourished under his system. At his 1983 retirement ceremony, Derline and Slettedahl both said Donahue encouraged them to shoot more frequently.

An outstanding all-around athlete at Longview’s R.A. Long High School and Saint Martin’s (where he played both basketball and football), Donahue spent two years at Centralia Junior High before taking the Elma job in 1957. He taught Washington State history, civics and contemporary world problems at Elma while building the basketball program from the ground up.

“He was one of the first coaches in the state to institute a little league program,” Thompson recounted. “It was an every Saturday morning-type thing. That’s how he started to bring up his players at an early age to get them into the program.”

Donahue struck pay dirt in 1964, when the Eagles went all the way. Even without a player as tall as 6 feet, Elma downed Medical Lake, 75-66, in the state Class A championship game.

During the late 1960s and early ’70s, Donahue’s teams engaged in epic battles with league rival Raymond. The 1970 team that included Derline and Sheets went 26-2, but fell to Raymond in the state Class A championship game.

The Eagles continued to regularly earn regional berths even after being reclassified AA during the mid-1970s.

Donahue retired following the 1983 season. Ironically, Jack Prince’s son Marvin (later an Elma coach) was the captain and MVP on his final Eagle team.

“He was a great role model for a lot of kids during that era,” Marvin Prince said. “He was a guy who was dedicated to trying to improve the values of young men and shaping them into good people to serve the community.”

Donahue continued to live in Elma until near the end of his life. He spent many of his post-retirement years indulging his passion for golf.

He was inducted into the Elma, R.A. Long and Saint Martin’s halls of fame.

Corey Morris contributed to this story.