Profile:
Winners of the Geoff Gowan Award
The Geoff Gowan Award was created in 1996 to honour former Coaching Association of Canada (CAC) president Geoffrey Gowan, CM, PhD. The award recognizes lifetime contribution to coaching development. It is awarded to a coach who has presented a positive public image of coaching and enhanced the role of the coach with the Canadian public.
2007 — Andy Higgins
A lifetime educator whose medium has been physical education, counselling, and sport, Higgins wrote and delivered the first formal coaching education/certification program in the country. He was the University of Toronto's first full-time track and field coach and was a leader in establishing the University of Toronto Track Club and created its first women's program. His coaching model evolved into Canada's first High Performance Centre for Track and Field.
Under Higgins' leadership, the University of Toronto Blues won 21 Ontario University Athletics track titles, six Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union titles, and 21 national cross country medals. He also served as a track coach at numerous Olympic Games, world championships, FISU Games, the Pan American Games, and the Commonwealth Games. A highlight of his coaching career came in 1988 when he coached Dave Steen to Canada's first ever Olympic medal — a bronze — in the gruelling decathlon. He also coached decathlete Michael Smith, Canada's flag bearer at the 1992 Olympic Games, to world championship silver and bronze medals.
From 1995 to 1999, Higgins coached performance in the corporate world before returning to sport as the first director of the National Coaching Institute–Ontario, a position he continues to hold.
A passionate advocate of coaching as a profession, Higgins was a founder of the Canadian Professional Coaches Association (now Coaches of Canada), and the Coaches Association of Ontario. In 2001, he was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame as a coach.
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