Over a lifetime of weird coincidences, this may be the strangest of them all, or at least the strangest when it comes to governance and volunteering.
Water polo has been my sport since I was eleven years old. I won my first award at 13, and started a five-year stint as provincial team captain. I was a coach and a referee and practically lived at the pool. But when I was 18 I moved away from Winnipeg and left the sport and the community behind for seven years.
After several years of travel, including most recently two years working in Indonesia, I returned to Winnipeg to finish my first degree. Coming back was tough, so I went back to the pool. First as a ref, then as a coach with my sister’s new team, and then, inevitably, as a player. Within weeks, the sport was once again the center of my life. But this time, I would take on a new role: that of board member.
I had been recruited to the board as someone who knew the non-profit sector and was already sitting on another board. It was flattering as a 26 year old to be encouraged to run for this leadership role, as well as a bit intimidating. But I went for it and was selected as one of a few new candidates in a contested election. Little did I know what I was getting into…
Water polo is a small sport and in Winnipeg at the time there were only two clubs, who were locked in near constant conflict. They had differing visions for the sport, different values, and coaches on each side who detested each other. It had exhausted the board and drained resources. This was the mess waiting for me at my first meeting.
The new board was cordial enough. A group of about eight parents of athletes, as well as another player around my age and me. Most were returning, with just three of us new. Our first agenda item was to pick a new president. Last year’s had another year on the board but would absolutely not consider being president again. And nor would anyone else it seemed. So, after a 45-minute stalemate, the youngest person in the room, at his first board meeting, became president.
It was an eventful couple of years in the role, and I learned a lot. The board was never quite as cordial as the first meeting, and it was a tough experience with lots of interesting problems and challenges (lots for future posts or case studies). Due to the strain of the role, a return to more travel as well as a busier lifestyle, I ended up leaving the sport again. This time for much longer but with some inconsistent drop-in playing over the years.
Thirteen years later, enter my seven-year-old son.
After talking about playing water polo with a friend of his at school, he wanted to try it. So he began practicing once a week with the littlest of kids and it was fun to be back in the environment and see some people I used to know. I wasn’t looking to get more involved this time though, and with my business, teaching, kids’ activities, and board work, I didn’t have the capacity. But it seems fate had different plans.
I get asked to sit on boards a lot. But can’t due to the nature of my work. So when the water polo club issued a call for board members in the lead up to is 2023 AGM, I didn’t think twice; there was no way I would put my name forward. But the day after the AGM, club members were advised that the meeting had to be adjourned early and it would be reconvened in a few weeks.
That’s not normal. Postponing an AGM mid-meeting means something has gone very wrong. So, I decided to sit in on the second AGM. And what a meeting.
Without going into detail, it was clear that the incoming board members had a mess on their hands, and I thought I could help without getting too involved. So I reached out to the new president to meet and to offer some tools and support, which she took me up on. Then I left the country for four months with my family and didn’t think of the club at all.
Our water polo club was now the only one in Winnipeg. The previous two got over their conflicts, spurred while I was president of the provincial sport association, and ended up merging several years later. This new club had none of the baggage from previous conflicts between the two clubs, but there many other problems. Internal conflicts, miscommunication, and personality clashes, combined with no real mediation efforts had led to board members being removed and the club unraveling. Over the next six months, things got worse.
But then due to a scheduling fluke, my son’s swim practice was at the same pool and at the same time as the adult men’s water polo scrimmage, which had moved days for the first time since the 1990s. So five months ago, with the club in turmoil, I got back into the pool to play consistently for the first time in more than a decade. I was even recruited back into reffing at that first scrimmage.
The club board’s mess was spilling onto the pool deck and it came to a head and something had to be done or else the team would collapse. Some parents proposed a radical fix: every board member would resign at the next AGM, and only people who had never sat on the club’s board could run. With lots of effort and diplomacy, two parents in particular, got buy-in from club members and the successfully pitched it to the sitting board.
A call for new board members went out and this time I stepped up. I was very reluctant to get involved but given my ridiculously specific resume—player, parent, coach, ref, former provincial sport leader, and governance consultant—and the fact that I was terming off my last board six weeks after the club’s AGM, it was all too perfect. So I ran in a contested but cordial election and was elected with six other passionate volunteers. At our first board meeting the following week, we elected our officer roles. It didn’t take 45 minutes this time.
And this is how I came to be president of an established water polo organization at my first meeting of the board, two times more than fifteen years apart.
