Joel Skinner

Joel is undoubtedly one of the most deserving coaches of this award. Though his contributions to our club may seemingly go unappreciated, this is unintentional and I believe it is only due to our true inability to show him enough gratitude for everything he does. As a young coach already involved with our club for over 6 years, Joel has dedicated much of his own life to better the performances of young athletes in our small community. In this short period, Joel has coached 7 scholarship athletes, 3 National Junior Champions, 2 National Senior/Para Champions, 2 National record holders, 5 National team members and the 2nd place 4 member women team amongst amateur clubs at the National Championships. He is currently the head coach and main coordinator at the ASW track club where he is the only coach for the throwing, sprinting, jumping, hurdling and multi-event groups. He works closely with the Para-athletic division of Athletics Canada with which he helps in coaching, competitions and coordinating training camps. In addition, Joel works as a teacher at a local high school where he volunteers to coach the cross country, hockey, basketball and track and field teams, containing many of our club members. Joel brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our group and a contagious desire to gather the most up-to-date information on our sport. In his limited spare time, he constantly works to upgrade his coaching status and learn from the best coaches in the nation. Humour is never absent at our practices to help us get through the toughest workouts and Joel teaches dedication and commitment to sport from day one. He is very welcoming and often encourages attendance from local athletes of various sports to our practices. He does this in hopes of building the strength of the relationship between track and other organizations in our community and to increase exposure of our sport. We learn as well, through his example, to maintain friendly affiliations with rival athletes and coaches. There are many families Joel is close to from the club: due to his unrelenting devotion to his athletes, he is like family to us. ASW is a small club, with few resources, so Joel expends much of his personal time, money and physical labour to ensure we have the best equipment with which to train (from homemade pvc hurdles to spikes), drive us across Ontario and Michigan for meets, searches the globe for sponsors and scholarships and is currently working to open an indoor track in our city to better our winter training facilities. It has been such a pleasure to work with Joel throughout the years as he has touched so many lives in Sarnia. He works hard to get us the recognition we deserve in our city and this is our chance to return the favour. We know that he is always proud of us and we just want to show him how very proud we are to have him as a coach.

TESTIMONIALS