Tuesday's With Dave

It's Gotta Be Fun It’s Like the Master’s. Once you win, you’re always invited back.   Al Overwijk’s ‘win’ is a win for Olympia. Olympia coach Al Overwijk is in the Lindsay, Ontario Sports Hall of Fame. He was a star at Carleton University in Ottawa. He coached at Carleton. He runs basketball day camps in both his hometown of Lindsay and at his summer cottage in Lac Sam, Quebec. He is an inspiring teacher and basketball coach at Ottawa’s Glebe High School.   But he is also a world champion. This national level basketball player and coach is a world-class prankster with a heart of gold and a passion for helping kids and having fun, usually at the same time.    Overwijk is a high school math teacher who brings stories and humour into the classroom daily. As he says on his blog, he has two passions: basketball and math. When teaching geometry, he was tired of drawing circles on the blackboard using a compass so one day he just tried a free hand circle, and it was…perfect...

MENTORING 101 One of the greatest things about Olympia Sports Camp is the opportunity to impact others. Here is a story that depicts that the impact we have on others can lead to an impact for generations to come. There is much more of this story in the book A Hero's Journey: From Little Norway to Olympia Sports Camp but suffice to say that the hundreds of players that Paul Melnik has coached owe a debt of gratitude to John Petrushchak. Thanks for sharing this Paul! Anyone who attended Runnymede Collegiate Institute between 1972 and 1999, quickly learned who John Petrushchak was, even if you couldn’t spell his name.  Coach P, as he was affectionately known, was like a father to many of us.  If you were in his class, if you played any sports, or if he had any opportunity to interact with you, he became a caring adult; a mentor; a father figure.   I lost my father when I was 15 years old, and I needed support & guidance.  Coach P warmly assumed that ...

Forever Friends This entry is a story told to me by Ainslie Thomson, original coach's kid, camper, counsellor and coach.  Ainslie's story takes us down memory lane and shows that friendships forged at Olympia create lifelong allies as we go through our own journey. Ainslie also provided me with a picture. In looking at that picture I see love and friendship but I also see a picture that so many people can replicate within their circle of Olympians. Literally hundreds of groups have sat at those same picnic tables for a picture. Also, a proud papa moment as Ainslie shared with me a side story about Olympians now in reflecting on my son, Daniel.  Forever Friends by Ainslie Thomson   Olympia to me is family, lifelong friends and a community that you are part of regardless of where you are.  I was fortunate to experience Olympia for 15 years as a coaches kid, 2 summers as a camper, counsellor for 3 years and now as a coach. My father was one of the original coaches who s...

  Poise, Confidence and Friendship   In the summer of 2019 Coach Grace gave me a few minutes every week at one of the Hero's Awakenings ( nee Dave Talk) to get the word out about A Hero’s’ Journey: From Little Norway to Olympia Sports Camp , explaining to campers, counsellors and coaches that they all were heroes in their own journey, and to elicit personal stories that would be part of The Soul of Olympia chapter of the book.   After my week 4 talk I was sitting at a picnic table enjoying the Muskoka sun and making notes when these two then 13-year-old coach’s kids came up and said they had a story for me. They had me at hello.   Their thoughts are as honest and beautiful a perspective on life at Olympia as they are a testimony to the three questions we hear week after week, year after year. Did you have fun; did you meet new friends; did you improve in your sport? This story answers yes to these age-old questions. Oh, the wisdom, confidence and poise, of Olympians,...

  Anyone who has been to Olympia Sports Camp, and especially people lucky enough to have worked there during the 30-year tenure of Associate Director Greg Rogers, knows what an impact this man has had on the camp, and on literally hundreds of lives. But how many know the story of how he became a teacher and how that eventually led him to Olympia in the first place?    A natural leader who shows his care for kids and his acumen for a high-energy existence, one may think he was destined to teach from an early age. The reality is that Greg's journey didn’t take him toward teaching until he was a university student at York, studying urban planning, and was being groomed by Bell Canada in their young managers program to be in their engineering department. His dad had worked for Bell and his path seemed set. But as many paths diverge, Greg found teaching, or maybe teaching found Greg.   It comes down to a floor hockey game.   One of Greg’s mentors was his high school ...