Tuesday's With Dave

 A Career Well Served An Olympia Sports Camp coach for years;  10 years with the CTA prep team in Ottawa; coaching at two different universities- in the same city! National Champion at Prep and University levels. Named to the Cornwall Sports Hall of Fame in 2024.  And it all started with a card game.  Coach Trevor Steynor is exactly the type of volunteer and passionate coach that keeps youth sports going, and Trevor took the lessons of his youth coaching and turned it into a career working with athletes at the highest levels in Canada. I steal the opening of Trevor's speech when he was inducted into the Cornwall Sports Hall of Fame in 2024 to capture the philosophy of this basketball lifer. This life coach. "Coaching is a collection of experiences and moments. It's these memories that makes coaching come alive.  Rugby Coach Sir Clive Woodward said “ How do you want to be remembered? “ Some players called me “Coach”, “Trevor”, “Trevorbaby”. I hope I've had an imp...

Talk. Heal. Thrive. “I love when people that have been through hell walk out of the flames carrying buckets of water for those still consumed by the fire.” – Stephanie Sparkles Hello Olympia friends, Thank you, Chris, for your support and encouragement in my dream to make a major dent in the stigma surrounding mental illness…the stigma that stops too many people from reaching out for help. As I move forward into this uncharted territory of writing my book, it is wonderful having a friend, encourager and ally like Chris who has already travelled down this book writing road ahead of me. Twice! Thank you for believing in me, Brother! I also want to give a huge Olympia swoosh to Greg Rogers for believing in my message and getting me started on my professional speaking engagements back in 2012. Swooooosh! Thank you, Greg. In the inspirational words of Dave Grace, I’m “taking the bat off my shoulder” and taking the risk to let you peer inside my brain for a little while. It’s scary to put th...

 This week's blog is actually a two-parter. After reading and writing about Coach Don Ryan in Mike Hickeys' great book, When Basketball  Was a Game   I  again got to thinking about the people we get to meet along our journey, and how they enrich our lives. This week I tell about another great person I have been fortunate to meet, learn from, and become friends with, on my journey. To introduce this Olympian I include one of the most iconic pictures that captures the essence of Olympia and an excerpt from chapter 1 of A Hero's Journey: Beyond Little Norway and Olympia Sports Camp.  This picture is worth a thousand words of life at Olympia Sports Camp. It has a world class athlete and entertainer Harlem Globetrotter Curly Neal, hanging out and having fun with a bunch of teen or 20-something counsellors on a beautiful sunny day in Muskoka. Dave Grace brought Curly up to wow and motivate the campers and staff alike, but this picture shows the humanity of having a bl...