Our Thanks to KIN Alumni who Served as Mentors in the School's 2020-2021 Mentorship Program

Joseph Iacobellis is a Vancouver legend in his own right and was dubbed the ‘man with the midas touch’ when it came to the longevity and success of Capilano University’s (formerly Capilano College) athletics program. Retired now since 2016, Joe was Capilano’s second Athletic Director and built an elite soccer program by setting high athletic and academic standards.  During his tenure he captured 10 British Columbia Colleges Athletic Association (now PACWEST) championships. Capilano U also earned the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association (CCAA) Supremacy Award (25 years) for Men’s Soccer in 1999. Iacobellis also built the men’s and women’s volleyball program from scratch – and went on to coach the Blues to a BCCAA title in Women’s Volleyball. Iacobellis is an inductee into the CCAA Hall of Fame in the Coach Category.

Born in Italy, his family moved to Vancouver when he was five. It seems as if Joe was destined for sport. He attended Templeton Secondary school from 1965 -1970 where he was taught by “outstanding teachers with incredible sport history. My PE teachers included inspiring people like: Canadian Rugby Hall of Famer, Ted Hunt (BPE 57, MPE 61, PhD 76); Harry Jerome, Olympic sprinter and medalist; and Victor Lindal, the Women’s National team volleyball coach who introduced me to the sport of volleyball and was my high school coach. These teachers all had an impact on my young sporting development.”

“I was accepted into the faculty of science at UBC in the fall of 1970 and made the UBC soccer team under the tutelage of head coach, Joe Johnson and assistant coach, Joe Molnar. I have many fond memories of road trips with the team. At the completion of my second year of science, I chose to apply to the School of Physical Education and was accepted into the Exercise Science program where I could incorporate my interest in science with my passion for sport. I was fortunate to have been taught by some great professors such as Dr. Coutts, Dr. Schutz and Dr. Sinclair to name a few. These professors had an influence in my decision to apply for the Master’s of Physical Education program in 1974.”

It was the summer of 1974 when he was travelling Europe with friends that he received an offer from the UBC athletic department. “I was in Belgium and I got a call from Marilyn Pomfret at UBC, asking me if I wanted to coach the women’s varsity volleyball team,” he says. That’s how, as a master’s student, he ended up in charge of the UBC Thunderbirds, one of the country’s top university teams.

After graduating with an MPE in 1977, he found full-time employment as a faculty member at Capilano College in North Vancouver.  Joseph worked at Capilano for 40 years claiming three Canadian championships and 11 provincial titles – in two different sports – as a head coach, and dozens of other provincial and national medals that were won under his watch as athletic director. Entire programs were built from scratch, teams crafted by an energetic man with a shoestring budget. Scholarships were created, rising from basically zero when Iacobellis arrived to a robust system that now supports more than half of the student athletes on campus.

However, Joe was an educator as much as a coach and in 1992, he co-articulated an entry level Physical Education program and states that he is “proud of later developing the first Human Kinetics two-year diploma program in 2001, offering studies in Exercise Science and Physical Education.”  Later on, Iacobellis would hand the program over to Milt Williams (UBC BPE 77) who grew the program from the first class of 62 applicants to over 400 applicants years later. This program has recently been developed by Capilano University into a degree program in Kinesiology which will open its doors in the fall of 2021.”

Being an athletic director at a college or university is a demanding job, and likely few can say they did it better than Joe Iacobellis.

Glen Mulcahy (BPE 1991) grew up playing multiple sports across the country and played on provincial winning teams in Hockey, Football and Rugby. Glen’s major was in Motor Control and Performance and soon after graduation he began coaching. He has now coached men, women, boys and girls in slow-pitch, hockey, baseball, softball, rugby and ball hockey for more than 2 decades. Glen is the founder and CEO of Paradigm Sports and the Executive Director of For the Love of the Game, two organizations with the key goal of educating coaches, parents, and sport organizations about current trends, evidence-based research, and best practices to ensure youth sport is a wholly positive experience for kids. When Glen tells people “Kids play sports because they’re fun, they quit when they’re not. It’s not rocket science,” demonstrates his ability to state the issue simply, directly and clearly. He engages people in a manner so that they want to understand more and to develop their knowledge for the kids they serve. Glen is an involved Kin Alum who won the Alumni Builder Award in 2018. He has volunteered as a guest speaker and has served as on the KIN Mentorship Program as a mentor to KIN students for the past 5 years. Now with two youth athletes of his own, Glen is determined to bring the game back to the kids and inspire youth to stay involved in sports throughout their adolescence and through their adulthood as well.

From the beginning of her undergraduate year, Robyn Freiheit, BKin 2015, was highly involved with campus life as a leader, a student representative and a project coordinator. In 2012, Robyn was the KIN team recruiter and supervisor with the Kinesiology Transition Program for new KIN students, and worked to plan KIN programming for UBC’s annual orientation day. That year she also provided personalized advising for, and fostered relationships with, KIN students as an academic peer advisor. And in 2014 she was subsequently employed as a Special Projects Coordinator for UBC’s ‘Make Your Mark’ Campaign. Robyn acted as student liaison and advocated for student rights on campus between various sectors of the University.

Robyn had been studying the social aspects of Kinesiology, specifically public health, and health policy and law, but found a home in marketing when she worked as VP Public Relations for the 2015 Kinesiology Games. In this role, Robyn worked on a full re-brand of event and marketing materials for the largest student-run undergraduate Kinesiology conference in Canada.

Upon graduation from Kinesiology, Robyn moved to Portugal to explore her family heritage and pursue a new life-style. After working in marketing and project management jobs for a number of years Robyn says she “became uneasy in my roles as they were not satisfying my need to make a larger impact in the social issues around me”. So she took a leap of faith this year and started a Master of Public Health at the University of Porto in Portugal. “I have been interested in public health for quite some time due to the interdisciplinary nature of the field. I am focusing my thesis on food insecurity in the Azores islands in an attempt to better understand the “why” to the problem and with the hope of influencing future research and policy efforts. I love studying this subject which involves health, policy, sustainable food systems and supply-chains. She continues her role with UBC as the alumni UBC representative for Portugal and recently had an alumni story published in Alumni UBC’s Trek Magazine.