U SPORTS held its 43rd Annual Meeting and accompanying professional development sessions June 3-4, delivered in virtual format due to the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic

Read More

Related: U SPORTS Board of Directors welcomes new members and appoints new officers for 2020-21

The third and final day of the conference portion featured keynotespeaker Thomas Hall from the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC). In his current role, Hall Serves as National Manager of Game Plan.

Hall’s presentation titled Preparing Student Athletes for Life After Sport, focused on promoting athlete wellness - how to treat athletes with respect to their physical and mental health, and providing them a transition plan following their careers.

“Part of athlete wellness is changing how we perceive athletes and how we treat athletes,” said Hall. “Currently, in the Canadian sport system at large, we treat athletes as a special category, and by treating them as special, we make them vulnerable…people's lives are at stake, if we don't actually fundamentally change how we're doing this."

The membership also heard from Mitch Thompson, who delivered key updates on the ongoing work of IMG to build and execute a national sponsorship strategy for university sports in Canada. In addition to aggregating rights across the U SPORTS network, IMG is also developing sponsorship opportunities for U SPORTS and conference championships, as well as member school assets including recreation centres, intramural programs and varsity sports.

“We can’t at the national office with IMG and U SPORTS operate in isolation for any of this,” said Thompson. “We have to always be engaging the broader network, whether that’s conferences, universities, host committees…there’s that constant layer of stakeholder engagement that’s a part of this whole spectacle.”

In U SPORTS Presentations, details and updates on the organization’s new Transgender Policy announced in September was led by a panel discussion of Dr.Debra Kriger and Beth Ali (University of Toronto), Danika Smith (University of Ottawa) and Martine Leblanc (Université de Montréal). The Policy, which permits student-athletes to participate in U SPORTS competition based on the gender as which they identify, is among the most progressive and inclusive transgender policies in high-level sport.

"Their world is full of doors and barriers,” said Ali, U of T’s Executive Director of Co-Curricular Athletics and Physical Activity Programs.“They need a place where they can feel like a varsity athlete...or a participant in one of our programs."

Additional U SPORTS presentations included breakouts on Athletic Financial Award policies and National Championship principles (formats, berth and seeding, ranking systems), as well as updates on the current landscape of national statistics.

The festivities wrap up on Thursday with the Annual Meeting of the membership.  

As the week drew to a close, two final keynote speakers headlined Thursday’s Annual Meeting proceedings, beginning with Dr. Greg Wells opening the 2019 Annual Meeting of the membership.

Wells, a health and Performance Physiologist and Best-Selling Author has dedicated his career to making the science of human limits understandable and actionable by working with some of the highest-performing individuals on the planet including Olympic and World champions.

Wells spoke about the five keys to building healthy high-performance teams, including clarity of vision, psychological safety, dependability, meaning and impact, adding these factors also positively contribute to one’s mental health.

“When teams have absolute clarity of vision, then sport departments within universities have absolute clarity of vision,” said Dr. Wells in reference to one of the five keys. “And they're going to achieve great things and unlock new possibilities.”

The final guest speaker of the event was Alberto Ruiz Luca de Tena, founder of Angles in Sport, who led the members in an activity called the Napkin Exercise. The activity featured a self-reflection of eight questions and one piece of paper and pen for each delegate, unfolding the value chain in sport as well as three themes for leadership in sport: leading organizations, leading others and leading self.

In the final U SPORTS presentation, President and CEO Graham Brown gave the members an update on the national office’s broadcast strategy, discussing The Future of Televised Canadian University Sports following the conclusion of recent six-year Sportsnet partnership. Brown reinforced the importance of U SPORTS competition continue to hav broadcast exposure.

“I still believe television is still a great vehicle for (U SPORTS) – it validates what we do,” said Brown. “Sport might be the last little frontier of television that really relies on live. Very few people will watch or get excited about a tape delay.”

The festivities on Thursday also featured the official Annual Meeting of all 56 members, as well as a U SPORTS Board of Directors meeting. Click here for a full recap.

Tuesday was highlighted by two keynote speakers, including a presentation delivered exclusively in French.

Veronique Dubois, the Director of Programming at TVA – U SPORTS’ official French-language football broadcaster – gave a presentation titled Marketing and Promoting University Sports: Unique Lessons from Quebec. During her address, Dubois described how TVA is able to highlight the talent of U SPORTS student-athletes through unique storytelling, by emphasizing the emotion and journey of the players, over their performance.

“TVA covers U SPORTS Football the same (way) as the NHL or MLS. We don’t want to be just a broadcaster,” said Dubois. “We want to contribute to the growth and development on both sides. This partnership is built on a win-win relationship.”

In the afternoon, Marie-Claude Asselin and Eleni Siganos, of the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada (SDRCC), spoke about the Disciplinary Process, describing their experiences in dispute resolution, and how U SPORTS members can better implement and enforce a code of conduct. Specifically, Asselin and Sigano examined how to navigate a school’s code of conduct, and how to ethically and properly enforce it, while respecting the student-athlete.

"The code of conduct should be translating the values that are defined in your code of ethics into what this means in terms of behaviour,” said Asselin.

U SPORTS members also had the opportunity to network with potential new business partners that could help grow or enhance their respective athletic programs during the U SPORTS Supplier and Business Tradeshow. Almost 50 vendors took part, taking time to share their products with athletic directors and varsity staff of all 56 schools and four conferences across the country.

As part of the tradeshow, a renewed partnership with Wilson was announced, continuing as the official football and basketball supplier of U SPORTS for the next four years. Wilson has supplied the Bowl Games, Vanier Cup and Final 8 national championships for over 20 years.

In U SPORTS presentations, the framework for a new sport model was presented, while the concept of a potential new eligibility verification process was brought forward. Both sessions included breakouts for the membership to discuss these important topics in smaller groups.

The framework of the Sport Model includes criteria, key performance indicators and a National Sport Organization (NSO) application process for the addition of new sports, and process for identifying the target sports to be added and/or reclassified within three years of being implemented.

The 2019 U SPORTS Conference and Annual Meeting kicked off in style Monday night with the U SPORTS Honours Awards Gala, celebrating those who have helped develop and grow university sports in Canada throughout their careers.

Legendary Saskatchewan football coach Brian Towriss (Jean-Marie De Koninck Coaching Excellence Award), Guelph-based reporter Rob Massey (Fred Sgambati Media Award), and Queen’s University Manager of Interuniversity Sport Janean Sergeant (Austin-Matthews Award) were honoured at the Hilton Markham / Toronto Suites and Conference Centre.

The opening day was also highlighted a pair of keynote speakers. Lorraine Lafrenière, CEO of the Coaching Association of Canada addressed the membership on empowerment of our student-athletes through coaching and safe sport.

“What happens through sport can prepare people for the unanticipated. It is the perfect training ground for the unanticipated, the unexpected, the resiliency in how you respond to those experiences. So if there was ever a moment of doubt…know that what you do makes a difference in the lives of every person who faces adversity and creates a better opportunity for them to be resilient and to contribute and to continue to be a better part of Canada.”

Earlier in the day, Chris Overholt, CEO of OverActive Media, took the stage to discuss the growing industry of eSports, which topped $1 billion for the first time in February 2018. After serving seven years as CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee, Overholt took on a new challenge in bringing the industry to Canada through an integrated company with seven international eSports teams. That global eSports stable includes the Toronto Defiant, who will compete in the Overwatch league and a UK-based franchise in the vastly popular League of Legends European Championship.

“eSports is an industry growing at an accelerated pace next to the NBA, NFL, NHL, and on a trajectory to eclipse those major leagues over the next 10-15 years,” said Overholt. “There is a monster demographic between the ages of 18-25 who simply do not consume media and do not consume sport the same way that many in this room, and myself did growing up."

Monday’s key U SPORTS Presentations included President and CEO Graham Brown, and Chief Operating Officer David Goldstein introducing the membership to the new four-year strategic plan that will guide the organization into the future, the Governance Review undertaken by the organization over the past year, as well as key successes and learnings through the transition from CIS to U SPORTS since 2016.

The new Stategic Plan outlines the Vision, Mission, and Values of the organization, the Operating Principles that inform its day-to-day work, and the Strategic Priorities and Key Initiatives that will help move Canadian university sports forward.

“We’re an evolving organization that isn’t just isolated to what we do in one year – it’s one year building on the next year, building on the next year,” said Brown. “Hopefully, we’ve built enough foundational projects and have them in place in order to continue to help us to make the right decisions.”

The third and final day began on a sombre note with U SPORTS President and CEO Graham Brown recognizing legendary former McGill / Bishop’s football coach and Gaiters athletic director Bruce Coulter, who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 90.

Inducted in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1997, the winningest U SPORTS football bench boss at the time of his retirement is the namesake of the Vanier Cup Defensive MVP, known as the Bruce Coulter Award.

Headlining Wednesday’s keynote presentations was a Video Content and Webcasting panel, featuring Mike Mike Mahoney of NeuLion; Hugh Dobbie of Yare Media Group, The Centre for Digital Media’s Jon Festinger, and Peter Young from Hubcast Media Productions.

Moderated by Ken Saint-Eloy, U SPORTS Senior Manager of Marketing and Communications, the panel examined the changes that have taken place in the digital media and streaming industry.

“Traditional broadcasts are a one way medium. But when you look at digital media, it’s very much two-way. So suddenly your audience can talk to you,” said Festinger, highlighting U SPORTS’ key ambassadors as its current students and alumni. “You have a lot more information about your audience and especially if you’re running university sports – that gives you a ton more flexibility…That one-way to two-way switch is actually a very big game-changer.” 

Mahoney added how the national office can create a successful webcasting strategy, touching on the current state of livestreaming across the membership.

“Try to be less fragmented,” Mahoney offered, referencing how most U SPORTS conferences and select schools run their own respective livestreaming platforms of varying production levels. “Having the schools and the conferences come together to one platform would provide a lot of opportunities.”

Highlighting the U SPORTS presentations, Bob Copeland of McLaren Global Sport Solutions Inc., provided a comprehensive evaluation of the current sport model – including the current 12 sport offerings, as well as various non-U SPORTS sanctioned sports that hold national championships.

Charonne Thomasos, Manager of International Games Operations, also presented the new International Business Plan, while Caleb Benoit of SOHO Media Solutions spoke on working with U SPORTS on uniform aggregation of national statistics to wrap up the conference.

The Annual Meeting wraps up the proceedings in Vancouver on Thursday.

On Tuesday, a trio of keynote speakers took to the stage, beginning with Michelle Collens, manager of Sport Hosting Vancouver. Collens opened the second day of the U SPORTS Conference and Annual Meeting speaking to the membership about hosting, the impact of partnerships and what it takes to run a successful sporting event.

“Your objectives are (to host) a high-quality event, make more revenue, and connect back to community,” Collens said, emphasizing the importance of working with the local market. “It’s not just about that event. It’s about hosting that community.”

In the afternoon session, Business Council of Manitoba vice president and former U SPORTS student-athlete Kevin Chief delivered an inspiring account of his challenging upbringing and how sport changed his life. Chief, who grew up in a family that struggled to make ends meet, had the opportunity to attend a basketball scholarship in elementary school that ultimately left a lasting impact.

“(U SPORTS) has access to over 14,000 student-athletes, over 14,000 ambassadors, over 14,000 role models,” said Chief, who later played for the Winnipeg Wesmen men’s basketball squad. “An army of people that we can use to go out and give young people a tap on the shoulder and say ‘University is for me.’”

The final guest speaker was Dr. Michael C. Meyers, PhD, FACSM from the Department of Sport Science and Physical Education at Idaho State University, who shared his research on the differences in soccer and football injury rates while playing on artificial turf vs. natural grass – reminding the members to make an informed decision when choosing their playing surface.

U SPORTS members also had the opportunity to network with potential new business partners that could help grow or enhance their respective athletic programs during the U SPORTS Tradeshow Presented by Discount Car & Trucks Rental. Over 25 vendors took part, taking time to share their products with athletic directors and varsity staff of all 56 schools and four conferences across the country.   

U SPORTS staff presentations included updates on eligibility and compliance led by Tara Hahto, Manager of Compliance, Eligibility and Discipline, and Chief Operating Officer David Goldstein, followed by smaller group breakouts.

Goldstein closed the day with an update on the implementation of U SPORTS’ new forthcoming strategic plan, which will replace the existing five-year plan that has been in place since 2013.

The 2018 U SPORTS Conference and Annual Meeting is officially underway, with the best in university sports in Canada being honoured on Monday night.

Kadre Gray and Marie-Alex Bélanger took home the BLG Awards as U SPORTS Athletes of the Year, while decorated swimming coach Byron MacDonald (Jean-Marie De Koninck Coaching Excellence Award) reporter Jason Hills (Fred Sgambati Media Award), and long-time athletic director Dick White (Austin-Matthews Award) were presented with the U SPORTS Honours Awards at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on UBC campus.

The day was also highlighted by keynote speaker Mike Shaw of HeadStartPro, an injury prevention and performance-based training program for athletes. A UBC Okanagan alumni and freestyle skier, Shaw shared his four pillars of Leading with an Athlete Mindset, and his story of returning to the slopes after a devastating injury during a routine demonstration, that was thought to have left him paralyzed.

“Obstacles and hardships are the path of most resistance,” said Shaw, who started skiing again just one year after the accident. “However, those challenges are where we grow the most…The growth mindset is just a belief that you can develop your abilities and capabilities to achieve excellence and that’s where you confidence is.”

IMG senior vice president managing director Sam Galet and director of sponsorship strategy Mitch Thompson also made a presentation on sports sponsorship, while U SPORTS Sport Administrator Zach Weese gave an update on the national office’s Awards and Recognition Program, including the new U SPORTS Digital Awards initiative.

The 2018 U SPORTS Conference and Annual Meeting kicks off Monday, June 4 at the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel in downtown Vancouver, where athletic directors from all 56 member schools and representatives of the four conferences will gather for three days to hear from notable keynote speakers, receive important updates from the national office and have the opportunity to network with their peers. The attendees will also have access to the U SPORTS University Athletics Tradeshow, featuring over 25 vendors.

This year’s conference begins with a start-studded event – the 26^th BLG Awards Gala. On Monday night, the 2018 U SPORTS Athletes of the Year will be crowned and for the first time alongside winners of the U SPORTS Honours Awards, which recognize the career achievements of members to Canadian university sport. The gala begins at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT at UBC’s Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, and will be livestreamed for free on USPORTS.Live.

Tuesday will be highlighted by a keynote address from Dr. Michael C. Meyers, PhD, FACSM from the Department of Sport Science and Physical Education at Idaho State University. Dr. Meyers’ presentation is entitled Is All Artificial Turf Created Equal? The Latest in Football & Soccer Player Injury Research, and will shed light on the difference in injury rates while playing soccer on natural grass vs. artificial turf. The conference will also include a presentation on Event Hosting and the Impact of Partnership by Michelle Collens of Sport Hosting Vancouver, along with a discussion panel on live video content and webcasting on Wednesday, featuring representatives from NeuLion, Yare Media, the Centre for Digital Media and Hubcast Media Productions, among several other presentations and thematic breakout sessions.

Other key presenters include:

• Mikes Shaw, HeadStartPro – Leading with an Athlete Mindset
• Sam Galet, IMG
• Stéphane Boudreau, RSEQ – Government Relations & Sport System Alignment: Lessons from the RSEQ
• Kevin Chief, Business Council of Manitoba – Insights into the Importance of University Sports
• Bob Copeland, McLaren Global Sport Solutions Inc. – Sport Model Review & Implementation
• Caleb Benoit, SOHO Media Solutions

For more information, please visit the Conference and Annual Meeting Website here.

1. Creating a high-performance environment 

Mike Chu, NZ Rugby 
On Tuesday, conference facilitator Mike Chu of NZ Rugby described the tradition and rich culture that comes with being a member of the New Zealand rugby union, the most successful rugby club in the world.

“The All Blacks talk a lot about guardianship of the legacy – that you are just transient in that jersey,” he said. “When you put that jersey on, you want to leave that jersey in a better place for the next player.”

2. Student-Athlete Mental-Health Initiative 

“Student-Athletes are suffering in silence because they’ve grown up to think that sharing any type of weakness is something that they should be ashamed of. “They’re keeping that to themselves and they’re not getting the help that they need.” - Samantha DeLenardo, SAMHI

3. High School Marketing Campaign  

A high school marketing campaign, targeting prospective U SPORTS student-athletes will launch for the 2017-18 season – in partnership with School Sport Canada, the governing body of Canadian high school athletics. 

4. Exhibitor Tradeshow 

Over 30 vendors on display, offering new business opportunities to U SPORTS members.

Kicking off the 40th U SPORTS Annual Meeting and 2017 Conference, Monday put the spotlight on student-athletes – from ensuring their welfare to embracing a culture of storytelling in order to build the product of university sport.

1. NCAA in the 21st Century: Opportunities, Challenges and Lessons Learned

Oliver Luck, executive vice president of regulatory affairs, NCAA.
In Monday’s keynote address, Oliver Luck shared his passion working for the NCAA and university sport, highlighting health and safety, academics, competitive equity, and revenue generation as keys for U SPORTS to grow as a business. 

“The word ‘amateur’ comes from a Latin meaning of ‘to love,’ Luck said. “And that’s what university sport comes down to.”

2. Elevating the broadcast quality of university sport in Canada 

“We’re a storytelling business. There is a no story too small...every little details counts because we never know what will become a story on that game day.” - Chris Black, Sportsnet 

“There is no reason going forward why we can’t make U SPORTS look and sound like an Olympic production.” - Dan Fernandes, Sportsnet

3. Athlete Welfare 

An injury data collection system is a potential useful tool in maintaining the welfare of U SPORTS student athletes – tracking where and when they played and how the injury occurred.
Concussion Legacy Foundation Canada already working with Western University and McGill University among several U SPORTS schools, with a goal of preventing concussions.
2 weeks - the average recovery time for a concussion if properly treated and reported.