Petro‑Canada’s FACE™ Program - Class of 2025 | Coaching Association of Canada

Every year, 55 up-and-coming athletes and their coaches are selected to receive a grant from the Petro-Canada™ Fuelling Athlete and Coaching Excellence (FACE™) program. Since 1988, Petro-Canada has provided over $14 million in funding to support more than 3,500 athletes and their coaches from across Canada.

FACE grants are given to athletes and coaches when they need it the most – when they have demonstrated their potential to represent Canada at the Paralympic or Olympic Games, but they don’t yet qualify for government funding. The selected pairs are awarded a $10,000 FACE grant to help them along their journey: $5,000 goes directly to the athlete and $5,000 to the athlete’s coach. These FACE grants are often used for training, equipment, coach education, and travel expenses for competitions.

Keep reading to learn more about some of the coaches receiving a FACE grant this year. To view the full FACE Class of 2025, visit petro-canada.ca/face.

As a 10-time Canadian national champion in triple jump and a 6-time national team member, Caroline Ehrhardt’s years as a competitive athlete built a strong foundation for her coaching career.

While working as an assistant coach for the Western University Mustangs Track & Field team for four years, Ehrhardt contributed to the Mustangs men and women winning the 2024 OUA team championships and 2025 U Sports team championships. She was also selected to participate as an apprentice coach in the 2024/25 U SPORTS Female Apprentice Coach Program, which offers mentorship and professional development opportunities to women in coaching positions across universities in Canada.

In 2025, Ehrhardt was named as the Head Coach of the Mustangs Track & Field program, where she continues to draw on her own experience and expand her skills as a coach to support young athletes.

Darrell Nordell is a prominent wheelchair basketball coach in Canada, known for his leadership with junior and provincial teams. He has been part of the wheelchair basketball community for over 30 years in a variety of roles, including as the head coach of the Alberta provincial team and as the assistant coach of the Canadian Senior Men’s national team.

Nordell has been a valued member of the Wheelchair Basketball Canada national team coaching staff since 2002 and has coached at numerous international events, including the Paralympic Games in Rio and Tokyo and a gold medal performance at the Paralympic Games in London.

As the Head Coach of the Canadian Men’s U23 National Team, Nordell supports the development of young athletes and guides the team towards international competitions, particularly the Men’s U23 World Championships every four years. He emphasizes the importance of enjoyment of the game and strives to ensure that athletes never lose the feeling they had when they first picked up the ball.

Mark Newton has been working in para sport for the past decade and is now a leading figure in para-alpine skiing in Canada. As the Senior Manager, Para-Alpine Domestic Programs and Pathways at Alpine Canada, Newton oversees development of the para-alpine pathway, including community and Next Gen programs, identification of young talent, and coach education.

Through Alpine Canada programs like “Carving the Future”, Newton promotes early exposure to alpine ski racing for para-athletes, helping them to build confidence, skills, and experience. He works to break down barriers to participation in para-alpine and provide clear pathways for athlete development to support the next generation of talent.

As a coach, Dr. Soha Mahmoud can apply a varied wealth of experiences to support young athletes. During her career as a competitive archer, she was a member of the Egyptian national team and competed at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. She later gained coaching experience in the U.A.E and at the World Archery Middle Eastern Center before moving to Canada and working as the Junior National Recurve Coach for Archery Canada from 2021 to 2024. In this role, she supported the high performance next generation program to identify and develop young talent, particularly in preparation for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

Mahmoud’s PhD in Sport Biomechanics also gives her an insightful perspective into high performance, applying her sport science expertise to help athletes hone their technical abilities.

Dr. Mahmoud continues to work with young athletes and develop the next generation of competitive archers in Canada, including her own daughter.

Yohan Chang is a coach, competitive athlete, and on-screen stunt double. He started learning taekwondo at only 2 years old, growing up training and competing while applying his martial arts skillset in movies and tv shows like the Umbrella Academy.

Chang has coached the national taekwondo team since 2022 and has coached at all levels of the sport, including with the senior national team at the Pan American Championships and with the junior and cadet teams for world championships. A student-athlete himself, his coaching philosophy is to lead by example as he trains with and mentors other student-athletes like Nithan Brindamohan, who won gold at the Rhine-Ruhr 2025 FISU World University Games.

Although he is currently prioritizing his athletic and film career, Chang continues to expand his coaching experience with young athletes. He was recently named as a coach for the Taekwondo Ontario Junior Athletes squad and for Canada’s cadet teams at international championship events. One of his priorities as a coach is to create supportive training environments that welcome new participants, encouraging them to get involved in the sport.