New NCAA sports convenor up to the challenge
The newest convenor of the Niagara Catholic Athletic Association and Niagara Catholic District School Board kindergarten to Grade 12 health and physical education consultant brings a lengthy and varied sports resume to the role.
Jennifer Benoit, a 43-year-old Welland native, played all sports growing up in elementary school at St. Kevin’s and at high school at Notre Dame.
She was a club figure skater from age five, including competing in synchronized (precision) skating at the provincial, national and international level. With the Fort Erie Optimistics, she skated at three International Championships, the precursor to the world championships. She also skated at Brock and coached the Brock synchronized team for one season.
As a teacher with the NCDSB, Benoit coached anything and everything, including girls basketball, boys and girls volleyball, rugby, slo-pitch and cheerleading.
She focused most of her energies on cheerleading since 2014 until the last school year when she helped coach the Saint Paul senior girls basketball team. Her 2021 basketball experience included agreeing to host the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations AA girls basketball championship 30 days before the tournament was scheduled to begin.
“My interest in curriculum, physical education and students being active both in curricular and co curricular was through Mike Sheehan,” said Benoit. “He was in this position a few years back and I had had a lot of conversations with him about my interest in it. He brought me to two Ministry meetings for the news phys-ed curriculum when it came out and that really built my interest in that area.
“I had done the coaching at the school level and being involved in athletics and running things was something I was interested in.”
She is looking forward to her role as sports convenor at the secondary and elementary school levels.
“At the elementary level, I need to spend the time to understand and learn what they are doing and why they are doing it,” she said. “In this role, I am really looking forward to getting the students active and involved as much as they can with the support of teachers and the principals.”
That same goal will be applied at the secondary level.
“The challenge coming out of COVID is to make sure we have as many teams run out of as many schools as possible. We have to get the students out there to try out for the teams to be able to have those teams run. We need to have the coaches, make sure they are happy and that we are supporting them,” Benoit said. “This is our first ‘normal’ year coming out of COVID and we want these kids to have a fantastic school year and athletics.”
She will also serve as the chair of the Niagara Catholic Athletic Association executive, which includes the athletic head at each of the member schools and principal representative Jim Whittard.
The job has a number of challenges.
“It’s definitely learning the ropes but I have been very fortunate with having people be so generous in taking the time to talk to me and explain things to me,” she said. “In my old job, I knew my day to day and I knew what to expect every single day. Although Chris (former convenor McLean) has been fantastic with prepping me and letting me know what is coming up and needs to be done, getting comfortable in my day to day will probably be a challenge.”
Like McLean, she is going to try to get out to as many events and games as possible.
“That is something that I am looking forward to because being at Saint Paul, I usually just attended Saint Paul events. It will be nice if Notre Dame is hosting a football game to take my family there. My daughters go to a Notre Dame feeder school, St. Kevin’s, the same one I attended. It will be great to be involved in the elementary and high school games.
Benoit believes school sports are crucial for students.
“The connection between mental health and physical activity whether it’s organized sports or even just something in the gym is very important. That mental health aspect coming out of COVID is very important. Getting students involved in physical activity will help with that. Coming out of COVID some students are a little hesitant.”
She also feels it is important to keep school sports alive for another reason.
“Most people get their start in school sports and we can’t monetize all these athletics. We need to be able offer free sports because this is the grassroots. If parents can afford to put their children in rep sports, that’s great but we need to make sure we maintain athletics and make sure it is available to everyone.”
Her role as consultant is to understand what is happening and why, try and instil some consistency throughout the board and make sure all areas are being supported curriculum-wise with professional development for the teachers.
“I want be a visible face to them,” she said.
Benoit did an undergraduate degree in phys-ed at Brock and then obtained her masters of science and physical education at Canisius.
She started her teacher career with a semester at the Halton District School Board followed up with a semester at Lakeshore Catholic. From there, she moved on to Notre Dame for one semester before landing at Saint Paul in 2004 where she taught phys-ed and worked in guidance.
