Late coach honoured
[attach]1876[/attach]The honour was all ours as the Town Crier awarded its inaugural central region Coach of the Year award to the late Kelly Pace of St. Clement’s girls school.
On hand at the June 15 event, all beaming, brave smiles, were Kelly’s husband, Andrew Pace, and two sons, Tyler, 13 and Quinn, 10, who accepted the award on behalf of their wife and mother.
Kelly was just 41 when she died following a vehicle collision Dec. 20, 2009.
She began coaching at St. Clement’s fresh out of Brock teacher’s college, where she met her husband Andrew. In her 18 years of teaching and coaching since then, she’s helped to foster generations of successful and healthy young women at St. Clement’s.
“She really embodied the whole St. Clement’s attitude about being a well-rounded person. She was very much teaching life skills through sport,” said Andrew Pace after receiving the award.
In her career at St. Clement’s, Kelly left an indelible mark on all those students whose lives she touched.
“Her students always loved being a player for her. At the visitation there were numerous alumni, kids from St. Clement’s who had come back to talk about how much she meant as a coach to them,” Andrew said. “They remembered her as one of those teachers who really cared and went the extra mile to make sure everybody was okay and made everybody feel included.”
Her students absorbed this attitude and carry it with them wherever they go, said Andrew, who remembered a story of when Kelly was eight months pregnant with Quinn and coaching a basketball team at a tournament in Montréal.
“At one point in a game when St. Clement’s was coming down the floor, one of the girls knocked over a girl from the other school and all five girls from St. Clement’s stopped immediately, concerned for the person that was knocked down. That was a reflection of what Kelly was all about,” Andrew said.
[attach]1877[/attach]In addition to coaching basketball, Kelly loved to coach softball. As the season began to shape up this year, one of St. Clement’s softball teams decided to dedicate their season to Kelly.
The team, as described by sit-in coach Sarah Dixon, was not strong technically, but they had spirit. Over the past few months Dixon would give the Pace family updates on how the games were going.
Miraculously, the team made it to the finals in their division.
“(Sarah Dixon) phoned the next night and said, ‘We won the championship!’ After it was over they all gathered together and said a little thank you to Kelly. It was very meaningful to the kids,” Andrew said.
In addition to coaching, Kelly sat on the provincial Curriculum Advisory Council where she helped to write the new phys-ed curriculum with a focus on holistic, rather than purely physical, education.
“Her focus was on teaching people how to incorporate fitness into their everyday lives and nutrition and all that kind of stuff,” Andrew said. “It wasn’t just the kids who were athletic that got the good marks.”
The Town Crier is not alone in honouring Pace: St. Clement’s has renamed an annual prize the Kelly Pace Award for Sportsmanship. Tyler, Quinn and Andrew were on hand June 22 at the school’s annual closing ceremony at Massey Hall to present the award named for Kelly.
The school community has also set up a trust fund for the boys and has put together a package of notes, letters and objects from Kelly’s years of service at St. Clement’s.
“We have all of these keepsakes to remind us of what Kelly Pace was to other people,” said Andrew Pace.
And now they have one more.