A job well done: Sarkis named to Welland sports wall
Doing a great job has landed Ray Sarkis on the Welland Sports Hall of Fame in the builders category.
Sarkis started out at Niagara College in 1986 as the men’s volleyball coach and six years later he began a 30-year-plus run as the athletic assistant and then intercollegiate coordinator.
The 2019 Ontario Colleges Athletic Association hall of fame and former OCAA president was heavily involved in governance at the OCAA and Canadian Colleges Athletic Association level and served as the volleyball convenor with both associations.
Sarkis was dumbfounded with the induction held Sunday at the Seaway Mall.
“As I mentioned in my speech, if my father-in-law (Mike Blazetich) was here he would say, ‘What the hell did you do? It was your job.’ It was my job but it was more of a vocation and that is the way I looked at it.”
His job was his passion.
“Once I got the position when Peter (Rylander) left, I saw what was needed, I saw what was being done at the big schools in Toronto like Humber and my goal was to build programs that were successful like theirs and we did that,” he said. “For a mid-sized school at that time, we started to compete and win against those schools.”
Among those victories were six CCAA championships and 27 OCAA championships.
The first step in the process was bringing in the right coaches who were passionate.
“Back then they got peanuts and they didn’t even get enough money to pay for their gas to drive back and forth to the college. They were paid $3,000 and that was it.”
Sarkis worked with the coaches to recruit athletes who were committed academically.
“In the beginning, it wasn’t that way. It was tough to convince kids to come to Niagara from metro (Toronto), London, Hamilton and Windsor and the things the other schools were offering was scholarships. The OCAA was offering scholarships before the OUA (Ontario University Athletics).”
He had to convince the college administration to offer athletic scholarships.
“It wasn’t much but we started to offer scholarships and we started to build that program year in and year out. It got better and better and we started paying the coaches for all their transportation and their expenses when they went off recruiting. That really helped because they could concentrate on recruiting the right student-athletes who were interested in coming to Niagara not only for the sport but for the academics.”
Sarkis is most proud of Niagara College becoming one of the top academic schools in the Canada.
“We started to graduate students first and athletes second. There were a lot of OCAA and CCAA honour students. We had 140 athletes and we had scholar athletes in the 40s. We held our student-athletes to a higher standard academically than the normal student at the college,” he said. “At the beginning, the college couldn’t see that. They wondered what we were doing but if we were going to be successful that is what we had to do. When I started, students were jumping from one program to another just so they could stay. There was no academic policy in place and we instilled an academic policy that also became a policy in the OCAA years later.”
His lone bit of unfinished business during his time at Niagara was not having a basketball team qualify for a national championship.
“Basketball is much tougher to get to nationals. If you make the Final Four in Ontario, you have already made a great accomplishment because it is so tough to get out of Ontario. It is such a tough conference.”
In doing his job, Sarkis’ philosophy was to be open, honest and direct with the student-athletes.
“Don’t give them some story, don’t mislead them, make sure they understand why they are there and make sure they honour our program wearing a Knights uniform.”
In the last 15-20 years, Sarkis believes college athletics has become as good as anything in Canada. He points to a RBC study which compared how university and high school students fared at getting jobs.
“They didn’t fare any better and they had to go back to college to get a career and that’s what happens. You have a lot of athletes who are heading back to college year after year. Not only that but athletes coming out of high school are seeing the light more and their generation of parents are understanding that colleges aren’t what they used to be. They are much better for education.”
The RBC study also stated that if students aren’t going to university for law, civil engineering or the medical field that they should go to college first, Sarkis said.
“Don’t waste your money going to university first and I am a true believer in that and I have always preached that. Guidance counsellors are probably the worst thing because as soon as there is an honours student they come them and say, ‘Here’s university.’ It’s wrong. Put the information out in front of the student and let them make an educated decision.”
This year’s induction ceremony will be broadcast on YourTV Niagara Friday, May 10 at 7 p.m., Saturday, May 11 at 9 a.m. and Sunday, May 12 at 1 p.m.
