Department aims to increase success of athletes on the floor and in the classroom
Michael Clegg
Sports Reporter
Over the summer the Humber Athletic department will put the finishing touches on its new Building Champions program, an initiative designed to push athletes to a higher level.
“You look at how many silver and bronze medals we had this year and we’ve got to get some more gold,” said athletic director Doug Fox.
“There’s got to be a philosophy about building champions and knowing what it takes to win,” Fox said. “We need to come back, in the fall for instance, with skill improvement. You can’t just go away and come back in the fall and not have work that you’ve gained. You can’t come back without proper conditioning. We had a ton of injuries this year because I don’t think we came back prepared that way. Winning doesn’t come easily and there’s some sacrifices that have to occur.”
These sacrifices will not just relate to athletic success. The Building Champions program is also designed to develop Humber athletes into better students and better citizens, something Fox said they have already started to address.
“We had a freshman orientation this year where we did three different sessions on the first weekend after labour day with our freshman athletes,” he said. “One of the sessions was exactly that – it was everything in terms of being a citizen within the college. Don’t wear your do-rags, get rid of the baggy pants – we started to address it in small ways.”
“The number one priority is to make sure these guys do well in the classroom,” said men’s basketball coach and varsity athlete academic adviser Darrell Glenn. “Unfortunately, many of the people who play athletics don’t necessarily come to community college, and particularly Humber, for academic reasons. So we have to try and change their thinking after they get here.”
The department will also look at making some sacrifices to the athletic programming it already has in place in order to maximize efficiency.
“We have a zillion things that we work at and at the end of the day if you ask how many things are going very well versus just existing, there is a lot,” Fox said. “But each person has been asked to give me the things that they think they can do without, or we should possibly look at eliminating. I’m running club programs and junior varsity programs and women’s rugby and I don’t even have leagues for these teams to play in so those would be the types of things that would be on the bubble for sure.”
In the long term, the Building Champions plan could also mean new facility development on campus including expansion of the weight room and a varsity exclusive gymnasium.
“I’ve looked at possibilities of going overtop of CAPS with a second floor, and all sorts of things like that,” Fox said. “We had the pool designed when it went in so that it could support a second floor, so expanding the weight room and fitness centre could go in that direction.”
“I don’t see a fee increase in the next five years,” Fox said in regards to facility growth.
The athletic department will look at the possibility of teaming up with Ontario Basketball and the Ontario Volleyball Association to maximize facility use and to subsidize the costs involved in expansion.
Any fee increase sought by the athletic department would have to be approved by the fee protocol committee which is made up of members of HSF along with Humber officials.
