Boxing coach part of Canada Winter Games contingent

Though none of his own athletes from the Slave Lake Boxing Club were competing, the club’s head coach Lee Tange was still fortunate enough to take part in a prestigious multi-sport competition.

Thanks to the pilot project the Aboriginal Apprentice Coach Program, Tange was a member of the Alberta coaching staff for the boxing team that participated in the Canada Winter Games. The games were held in Halifax, Feb. 12-27. The boxing matches were all staged at the Halifax Forum.

Nine Aboriginal coaches from across the country took part in the project, which was developed in partnership with the Aboriginal Sport Circle, Canada Games Council and the Coaching Association of Canada.

 “(The goal of) this program is to open doors and to get different Aboriginal coaches involved,” Tange said. “The hope is to get more Native coaches out there so we can train our kids better.”

Program organizers hope by exposing Aboriginal coaches to a multi-sport competition they will also further their careers by working alongside other established and highly respected coaches from their sport.

Tange, whose mother is Cree and father is Métis, founded the Slave Lake Boxing Club 20 years ago with just three athletes. Today the club boasts 40 members.
Over the years Tange has coached 17 national champions. Three of his boxers from the Slave Lake club captured bronze medals at their national championships in Montreal in January.

None of those pugilists, however, attended the Canada Winter Games.

This is the first time Tange has coached at the games, which are held every four years.

“I’ve sent numerous boxers there but never went there as a coach,” he said.

Alberta’s staff at the games included three other boxing coaches.

“The biggest thing I expect to get out of it is the experience,” Tange said.

Heavyweight Brandon Cardinal, a Cree from Peace River, was the only Aboriginal member of Alberta’s eight-athlete boxing contingent at the games and the only member to come home with a medal. He won the silver, losing the final bout to Matthew Basil Charles Whitford, of Nova Scotia.

“It’s a young team,” Tange said. “They don’t have a lot of fights.”

Besides attending the boxing matches at the games, Tange hoped to be a spectator at numerous other events.

The games featured 20 sports. Aside from the usual winter line-up of hockey, curling and figure skating, other sports featured included judo, squash and wheelchair basketball.

Tange met the eight other coaches in the Aboriginal Apprentice Coach Program in March 2010 during a four-day development course in Saskatoon.

He hoped they could meet again while in Halifax.
“It would be interesting to get them all together and maybe go watch some of the other sports,” said Tange.