Delta Sports Sports Editor: Mark Booth
Phone: 604-946-4451
August 18, 2010 The Delta Optimist A21
IT’S WHY I LOVE TO DRIVE. RICHMOND AUTOMALL 604.273.4531
Email: mbooth@delta-optimist.com
‘Boots’ excited about new role
South Delta Minor Hockey Association hires Lawson Boutilier as director of player and coach development BY
DAVE WILLIS
dwillis@delta-optimist.com
Lawson (Boots) Boutilier is looking forward to his new role as director of player and coach development with the South Delta Minor Hockey Association. “I think the coaches and kids are hungrier for more. They want to learn more. It’s a big responsibility but I’m looking forward to it, looking forward to the challenge,” he says. Boutilier, 51, says he’ll be assisting players and coaches from all of the association’s age levels. He’s been a volunteer the past three years with the association as a coach, division manager and VP of initiation hockey, but Boutilier’s new role will be a paid position. Association president Phil Alalouf noted quite a few other organizations have also gone the route of having a paid position when it comes to player and coach development. Just through the tunnel, both Seafair and Richmond Minor fall into that recent trend. Boutilier will work with a committee to implement and instruct sessions to help different age groups of players with certain skill
PHOTO BY
Lawson (Boots) Boutilier is the new South Delta Minor Hockey Association’s director of player and coach development. sets, Alalouf said. “We’re excited to have Boots doing what he’s doing. He’s very good with the kids. I think the coaches he works with very much respect him. He’s very
knowledgeable and very approachable,” he said. Boutilier, who’s originally from Halifax, finished his junior career with the Junior ‘A’ Halifax Lions of the Metro Valley Junior
Hockey League. He turned down a walkon tryout with the New York Rangers, opportunities at Dalhousie and St. Mary’s and a chance to referee in the American Hockey
CHUNG CHOW
League in favour of joining the RCMP. Boutilier, now a 30-year veteran with the Mounties, ended up being a player/ coach on an RCMP hockey team.
In the mid-1980s he was transferred to Bowen Island and started the Bowen Island Softball Association. It was an experience where he learned a lot about dealing with people and with all ages, he said, something that will help with his new role. “I think with this kind of a job you have to have strong interpersonal skills and communication and you have to like being around people.” He mentioned putting a focus on early skill development for initiation-level players, establishing skill sessions and programs for players on the verge of making rep teams and holding more goalie clinics as some of his objectives. Boutilier described the initiation level as “the foundation” of a hockey program. He’s also worked with the Vancouver Giants and the Delta school district’s hockey academy. A Ladner resident, Boutilier has a son, Chase, playing with South Delta Minor. The minor hockey association is made up of over 800 players, male and female, from six- to 19years-old, the organization’s website states.
Ladner rower captures gold, bronze at CanAmMex junior regatta The medals were another achievement in an outstanding season for Dart, who trains with the Delta Deas Rowing Club. Dart, who juggled preparing for his Grade 12 provincial exams while qualifying for the CanAmMex, won the senior men’s singles event at the national high school championships in St. Catherines earlier this
year. He was also honoured with the Kiwanis Delta Memorial Sports Award in June. The local service club teamed up with Delta Spirit of B.C. to annually present the award to the municipality’s top up-and-coming athletes who endure high costs to compete at the elite level.
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These predictions are supplements to and not replacements for the Canadian Tide and Current Tables, which include the only authorized tidal predictions for Canada and are provided by Canadian Hydrographic Service.
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THURS., AUG. 19 12:37 am 12.8 4:27 pm 13.8
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FILE PHOTO
Joe Dart, seen here competing at a regatta at Deas Slough in 2008, won gold and bronze at the CanAmMex junior regatta in Tennessee last month.
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Ladner’s Joe Dart was on top of his game at the CanAmMex junior regatta in Tennessee last month. The local rower won gold in the men’s single and bronze in the men’s quad race with teammates Matt Fournier, Aubrey Blackhall and Mike Thornton. The event included teams from Canada, the United States and Mexico.