Canku Ota

(Many Paths)

An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America

May 4 , 2002 - Issue 60

Guy From Garden River

Ted Nolan was "NHL Coach of the Year" in 1997. He led the Buffalo Sabres to their first Northeast Division Championship in 16 years. This award peaked a career that began in 1978 when Ted was first drafted by the Detroit Red Wings. Nolan played professional Hockey for eight years.

When he was with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1986, Nolan sustained a serious back injury that compelled him to retire prematurely. Like a true champion, Nolan retrained, refocused and reinvented himself; thus, he began a new career, a new life and a new string of successes.

Ted began coaching Junior Hockey with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League. As coach for the Greyhounds, he led the team to two consecutive league championships before winning the national title - Memorial Cup in 1993.

In 1986, Nolan launched the Ted Nolan Anishinabe Hockey School. The week-long hockey training camps took place in Northern Quebec, Southern Alberta and Northern Ontario. The camps were designed for youth five to 14 years of age.

Program educational components included hockey instruction, and physical skills and conditioning, peer pressure, self-esteem, and diet and nutrition. Nolan has served as a national Native Drug and Alcohol Program role model.

In 1992, Nolan was the first recipient of Canada's Aboriginal Achievement Award, which was a personal honor for him. Moreover, in 1993, Ted was awarded Ontario's highest honor the "Order of Ontario" by Premier Mike Harris. The Lieutenant General of Canada grants this prestigious award to select citizens.

Today, Nolan is the Director, Hockey Operations and Head Coach for the Indigenous Hockey Corporation and its Team Indigenous, and works as a professional sports consultant for the Assembly of First Nations (Ottawa). He travels across the country speaking to Indigenous youth about education, substance abuse and self-esteem. Nolan also gives public motivational lectures and speeches on team building across country and United States. Nolan has spent a lifetime grooming himself for careers in which winning is the ultimate measure of success. Like Midas, it seems everything Ted Nolan touches, turns to gold - only that the touchstones are perseverance and hard work.

Nolan was born in 1958 on the Garden River First Nation Reserve, which is still home to him, his wife of 19 years, Sandra, and their two children Brandon and Jordan.

Team Indigenous
The goals of the Indigenous Hockey Program are to help address issues that impact Indigenous youth such as suicide, high drop out rates in school, substance and solvent abuse and extreme poverty. And, to create new and exciting holistic opportunities for Indigenous youth to excel physically, emotionally, spiritually and culturally through education and professional sports training.
http://www.teamindigenous.com/default.htm

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