Congratulations to the legendary wheelchair basketball coach Tim Frick, who has recently been appointed to the Order of Canada. Frick was the first Paralympic coach to be inducted into the Canadian Hall of Fame. He served as head coach of the Canadian women’s team for two decades, during which he guided the nation to three Paralympic gold medals and four world championship titles.
Tim Frick (BPE 75) appointed to the Order of Canada.
Frick, Tim
Tim Frick, is a member of the Order of Canada who graduated from UBC in 1975 with a BPE (Kinesiology) degree. From his position as Physical Education instructor at Douglas College, Frick coached the college’s Wheelchair basketball teams to numerous national club team titles. He also coached the VCC Langara men’s volleyball team to the national title in 1980 as Frick had volleyball experience as a member of the very good UBC Varsity teams of the mid 1970s. More recently Frick coached both the BC Breakers women’s Wheelchair basketball and Canada’s national women’s Wheelchair basketball teams. The latter he coached from 1990 through 2009 including guiding it to four consecutive World Championships and three Paralympic gold medals.
Tim has also had the distinction of coaching both Rick Hansen and Terry Fox in volleyball and track during their younger years and was involved with Rick Hansen’s Man in Motion Tour as he and Rick, just a few years apart in age, were both UBC Kinesiology students. Frick continues to mentor as he is involved in implementing clinics and training sessions for younger coaches.
Frick’s coaching career has resulted in an outpouring of acknowledgements. A sample includes seven Canadian Coaching Association Excellence Awards, 1998 Sport BC Coach of the Year, 3M Male Coach of 2001, BC Wheelchair Sports Coach of the Millennium, Geoff Gowan Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Wheelchair Basketball Canada Hall of Fame and the Order of British Columbia. In 2010 the Tim Frick Paralympic Coach Excellence Award was created. He was the first Paralympic coach to be inducted into the Canadian Hall of Fame.
Tim Frick was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2020.
Robyn Mildren (Ph.D. 20), Graduate Speech
Robyn graduated with a Ph.D. in neuromechanics. Her thesis examined the leg muscle reflexes involved in the control of balance, and how they change with ageing and after suffering a stroke. She has gone on to do post-doctoral work at John Hopkins University. Robyn is an elite long-distance runner.
Greetings friends, faculty, staff, families, alumni, and the graduating class of 2020! My name is Robyn Mildren and I am addressing you on behalf of the cohort of grad students who are graduating alongside me today in UBC’s school of Kinesiology. I first want to speak directly to the master’s and doctoral students students graduating today, and give them their own special moment to take a breath and reflect on this accomplishment. I’m going try my best to put into words why I think what you have done is special.
In grad school you are given the very unique challenge to discover what you are truly passionate about and to develop your own path and methods to understanding it. Over my time at UBC, I was lucky to have had the opportunity to be introduced to so many different projects via your presentations at grad research day, chats over drinks at social events, or being roped into participating in human experiments.
For example, I’ve seen projects that have examined kinematics of breathing during exercise, bicycles for development in Uganda, the influence of sporting events on the environment, how spinal cord injury influences cardiac function, perceptions of individuals with disabilities in the gym, how to better diagnose asthma, and the influence of Parkinson’s on how the brain controls balance… just to name a few to give a glimpse of the breadth of incredible work done by grad students here in the school of Kin.
In general, I think what binds this multidisciplinary research together in the school of Kin is a fundamental belief in the importance of movement for physical and mental well being across all populations, genders, cultures, and ages, as well as a desire to promote these ideas in the community and to the next generation of students. You’ve all taken charge of advancing a small piece of this concept, whether it’s from a physiological, psychological, socio-cultural, or neuromechanical perspective.
I’m going to tell you a brief story of a conversation I had at UBC that still resonates with me. There was a lunch event hosted by UBC that I attended that was put on to celebrate phd students university wide who had advanced to candidacy. I was on the fence about going because I didn’t know anyone else going, but there was free food so of course I went. I ended up sitting beside a stranger. So making small talk I asked him what department he was in and what his research was on. He was in computer science and truthfully I didn’t understand much of what he was talking about it was pretty above my head. Then he asked me what department I was in and I said Kinesiology. And he paused, and then asked me “how do you think kinesiology can help our society right now”. And he went on to say, it scares me that I see rates of depression increasing, and health disorders climbing, and people are more and more stressed. What role do you think kinesiology can have?
And it’s hard to come up with one perfect, succinct answer for him. But when I look out over this graduating class and reflect on all the incredible work and people I have met over my time in grad school at UBC, I think collectively we have the answers. You have all developed your own creative path to better understand how humans move, how disorders effect movement, how to improve health and performance and break down barriers to physical activity, and explain to individuals how their body and mind works. The need for your role in the world has only been amplified this past year, where health has been at the forefront of our minds globally. I think it has not been been said loudly enough that taking time, knowledge, and resources to improve our health is one of our society’s best defences against becoming really sick.
I want to congratulate you on the impact you have made with your research, teaching, coaching, and outreach during your time at UBC, and I am confident that you will continue to take your role in society seriously and continue to be creative and compassionate leaders while you relentlessly pursue your passions. I could not be more excited to see how your future endeavours impact on the world.
Christine Pang (BKin 20), Undergraduate Speech
Christine is currently serving as a Kin sociocultural research assistant and personal trainer. Her goal is to pursue a Master of Physical Therapy.
Expectations:
Mr. Chancellor, Mr. President, deans/directors, distinguished members of the faculty, honoured guests, family and friends, and of course, fellow graduates, My name is Christine and I will be graduating with a bachelor’s of kinesiology.
I’m not here tell you about the roller coaster of a ride my undergraduate experience was, but if you want to hear about, let’s chat after. I am not going to be the most inspiring speaker you listen to today, I trip going up the stairs in the Nest and I give myself internal pep talks before speaking up in class, I am very much your average student. That being said, I did not expect to have the honour to speak to you today, but expectations are weird to me. For example, I’m sure we all had expectations of what our experience at UBC would be like. I had really simple expectations, just stellar grades, amazing work experience, a good social life, and mental wellbeing. Now, which those did I actually achieve? That’s up to you to guess.
My point is, expectations are powerful, they kept me driven and motivated (or it could’ve been my absurd consumption of Yerba-Mate, I don’t remember), but they were also my biggest source of distress. I set my standards according to others’ achievements. I had to match, or be better at, the things that I saw was impressive in others. I was juggling 3 jobs alongside a full course load, with work and learning experiences that I should be proud of, yet I still did not feel like I was enough. If you remember anything from my video, other than how flashy my braces are, it is to not let others’ success define your path. You will only be content when you start doing things to fulfill yourself rather than your resume. For me, it meant quitting 2 jobs to become a research assistant and do a directed studies project. Was this what I expected, no! But it opened up new avenues for me and brought out potential in me that I didn’t even know I had. Whatever your next step is, don’t compare your journey to the person next to you, expect greatness from within yourself and you will exceed your own expectations.
Even though you’re probably in your PJ’s, munching a bag of chips right, maybe even halfway across the world, I want you to take a deep breath, smile and acknowledge your many accomplishments in the past couple of years. Amongst the hundreds of unexpected things thrown at us, we made it, congratulations graduates!
It gives me great pleasure to announce this year’s Graduating Class Gifts to the University:
- $20,000 to commission a mural in the UBC LIFE Building to celebrate student experiences at UBC, including academics, celebrations, student issues, and more.
- $20,000 to the AMS Food Bank to support their operations amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and allowing them to serve more students who are in need, and lastly
- $20,000 to be given to UBC to support students with financial need during the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-related innovation: read about a new sports mask, designed in BC with input from Kinesiology professor Dr. Darren Warburton
Dr. Darren Warburton
Dr. Jack Taunton
When Dr. Bonnie Henry put out a call for innovation in COVID-19 face masks this summer Will Cromack, general manager of the TSS Rover’s men’s team at Swanguard Stadium, jumped at the opportunity. He came up with a new mask design with input from Dr. Darren Warburton, co-director of the Physical Activity Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention Unit at the UBC School of Kinesiology, and Dr. Jack Taunton, professor emeritus in UBC’s division of sports medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and the School of Kinesiology. The makers of DropGard say their masks are perfect for use while playing. Read more about it: Vancouver Sun.
New Paper Out
Nov. 30, 2020 – New paper out on maximizing the impact of global and national physical activity guidelines. Read it here!
Outstanding Article Award conferred to Dr. Moss Norman by the Sociology of Sport Journal
Congratulations to Dr. Moss Norman, whose paper titled “Indigenous Gender Reformations: Physical Culture, Settler Colonialism and the Politics of Containment” won the Outstanding Article Award by the Sociology of Sport Journal.
Dr. Moss’s article placed first out of 29 articles published in the journal in 2019. The award was presented at the recent North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Conference, which was held virtually in early November 2020.
Find the paper: Click Here.
Fighting apathy, finding an exercise routine vital as pandemic drags on, researchers say
Nov. 25, 2020 – Check out this recent CBC article featuring Dr. Guy Faulkner speaking on the importance of exercise during the pandemic for physical and mental well-being. Read it here!
Dr. Guy Faulkner named one of the most Highly Cited researchers for 2020
Nov. 23, 2020 – Congratulations to Dr. Guy Faulkner for being internationally named as one of the most Highly Cited researchers for 2020 and ranked in top 1% by citations for social sciences by Web of Science. Read more here!
Congratulations to Brian Wilson for the publication of “Sport and the Environment: Politics and Preferred Futures: Research in the Sociology of Sport”
Congratulations to Brian Wilson for the publication of “Sport and the Environment: Politics and Preferred Futures: Research in the Sociology of Sport” co-edited with Kinesiology alum, Brad Millington, a Brock University faculty member, in the department of Sport Management.
About the Book:
Sport and the environment are inextricably linked. Sport is dependent on its environmental contexts and is potentially environmentally impactful in its own right. Sport facilities – like ski hills, golf courses, and stadiums – can upset ecosystems and displace local residents. Teams and fans commonly travel in cars and planes that emit CO2. Rising temperatures might make participation in some sports impossible. Other examples abound. Yet while sport can be environmentally damaging, there is also hope that it can be a force for positive environmental change – for example, in modelling pro-environment forms of sport, and in decision-making by sport’s many stakeholders.
In a context where pressing concerns about the climate crisis have inspired calls for changes in how people relate to the environment, questions remain about the environmental sustainability of sport. Such questions are at the core of Sport and the Environment: Politics and Preferred Futures, which brings together a diverse collection of contributors to explore a range of topics, such as how sport is implicated in environmentally damaging activities, how decisions about responding to environmental issues are made, who benefits most and least from these decisions, and, ultimately, what a truly environmentally-friendly sport could look like.
Learn more about the book: Click Here.