Trish Nicholson will be recognized by Volleyball BC on Saturday night and remarkably it only will represent half her body of work.
The longtime teacher and volunteer at McRoberts Secondary School has been named the provincial organization’s High School Female Coach of the Year. Nicholson will be honoured at the Volleyball BC Excellence Awards in Burnaby. She guided the Strikers to a top eight finish at the provincial AAA championships back in early December but the award reflects well beyond the four month season.
Nicholson has be coaching girls volleyball at McRoberts for the last 29 years — typically taking a group at the Grade 8 level and staying with them for five seasons. She just finished a cycle with a talented Grade 12 group and will likely move back down to the Grade 8 ranks next September and start again.
What’s even more impressive is, for all but two seasons, Nicholson has coached basketball too.
This current school year has seen her take on the immense task of coaching volleyball and basketball at the senior levels. That’s a huge load from September to March and almost unheard of in an era where varsity high school coaches typically stick to one sport and run it as a year around program.
“I’m almost done now,” laughed Nicholson who still has about three weeks to go in the basketball season. “You are just not going to get the best of me (with this kind of a coaching load). That’s why I try not to do two senior teams and why I took last year off (from basketball).”
It’s a talented and close-knit Grade 12 group, led by Simon Fraser University basketball commit Tia Tsang, that led to Nicholson guiding the senior team this season.
The lifelong Richmond resident was a standout athlete herself coming through Palmer then McNair when Richmond had just three secondary schools. She got involved in coaching when she was still in high school and continued while studying at UBC. When she landed her teaching job at McRoberts, she didn’t hesitate about coaching two sports at the school.
“That’s what we all did back then,” she recalled. “But it’s different now and that’s why I’m struggling with it after 29 years. “You really need to know a lot where I just move on from one to another. Basketball is so technical these days.”
While the senior level might provide the most glamour, including the many provincially ranked teams Nicholson has coached over the years, she says it all starts back in Grade 8 and that’s why she enjoys returning to the entry level every five years.
“You should really have your best coaches in Grade 8 to set the tone,” she explained. “That’s where you want coaches who are the most patient and stick to their values. You want the kids to enjoy it and keep playing.”
Nicholson suggests her next five-year run with McRoberts teams might be her last as a teacher as she looks ahead to retirement and a new career as a personal trainer. That doesn’t mean she will walk away from coaching as well.
“It would be nice to have the luxury of doing it when you haven’t been working all day and have time to properly prepare for both,” she smiled. “Then I could go to all those coaching seminars too.”
