Building a Brand

ConU Grad Brings Grassroots Vision to CIS

SportsJustin Blanchard — Published April 2, 2013

At just 16 years old, he began giving swimming lessons for the Pointe-Claire Swim Club in 1972 before becoming a full-time coach there in 1976, a job he continued through university.

Upon graduating from Concordia with a biology degree three years later, the Beaconsfield native went on to coach swim clubs in Calgary and Phoenix, Ariz., as well as the Australian Institute of Sport before returning home to become chief executive officer and national coach of Swimming Canada in 2005.

After conquering those challenges with relative ease, turning Swimming Canada from barely competitive into a powerhouse and leading dozens of Australian, American and Canadian swimmers to Olympic medals, Lafontaine is ready for his biggest challenge yet—heading the Canadian Interuniversity Sport, the country’s governing university sports body.

“I’m a big believer in what our student athletes can be and [how] they can help the country, so I put my name in the pan and I got lucky enough to get the job,” said Lafontaine, who was announced as CEO of the CIS in January after former 12-year boss Marg McGregor resigned last May.

At first glance, the title may seem like a cushy one—but that’s before you consider all the hurdles the CIS faces.

Perhaps the biggest one is the growing number of Canadian student athletes accepting scholarships to play university sports in the United States, where the National Collegiate Athletic Association—the U.S.’s governing university sports body—dwarfs the CIS in terms of size, exposure and money.

One might assume the best course of action for Lafontaine and the CIS to keep Canadian athletes home is to adopt the NCAA’s business-heavy approach to student athletics, but Lafontaine has a different vision.

“We’re never going to be the NCAA—we shouldn’t be,” says Lafontaine. “I think we should be the CIS.”

But what the CIS is, exactly, still has yet to be defined.

“I think we need to build a brand in the CIS,” Lafontaine said. “Not just the CIS as a sporting organization, but the CIS as being one million students in Canada helping inspire a campus, inspire kids.”

Building that brand means reaching out not only to today’s university student athletes, but to those of tomorrow too.

“I think we have to go down to the grassroots, which is high schools, and make the CIS the destination of choice for Canadian athletes,” says Lafontaine. “I think our world-class athletes need to see that there’s a place for them in the CIS—that you can win in the Olympics and be a student athlete in Canada.”

Of course, no grassroots approach is complete without accounting for the community.

“We need to highlight not just the guy who scored three goals, but the guy who goes and helps kids in the community and is proud to wear the Concordia jerseys, proud to represent the school at the national championship,” said Lafontaine.

But pride from student athletes isn’t all that’s important—pride from the student body as a whole is needed as well, and is sorely lacking at most of the 54 universities that span the country.

The difference in attendance and school spirit displayed at NCAA basketball championship tournament March Madness compared to Canada’s own university basketball championships is proof enough.

With time, however, Lafontaine is confident the CIS can tighten the gap.

“I think the athletic programs need to give a reason why you want to go see the hockey game, or why you want to be at the basketball game—I think we need to build the experience for the student,” he said, listing the likes of having more on-campus promotion, making more events out of games and garnering more support from within athletic departments as ways to do so.

As for the student athletes, Lafontaine plans to get them more exposure with a new TV deal, start getting them involved in the Canadian government’s non-profit organization ParticipACTION and have as many possible take part in the annual Terry Fox Run this September.

But one month into his job after officially taking over as CEO on March 1, Lafontaine admits he’s still in the preliminary stages of turning his lofty goals into feasible tasks.

“We’re in the process of rebuilding the strategic plan for the organization,” he said. “I’ve gone to every Canadian championship that I’ve been available to so I could meet coaches, organizers, presidents of universities, athletic directors; I’ve talked to a lot of people about what the CIS can become and not what it’s not.”

But if his past successes are any indication Lafontaine is a man that produces results—sooner, rather than later.