Sport Manitoba Outstanding Volunteer NOMINEE PETER GARAGAN - SWIMMING The Nominee s Years of Service to the Sport: The Nominee, Peter Garagan was in the sport of swimming as a youth. As a volunteer he has been involved consistently since 1997. The Nominee s Achievements in Sport ranked in priority: International, National, Provincial: The Nominee is both a volunteer official and volunteer administrator at the Provincial & National level. Peter is a Level 5 National Referee with Swimming Canada with experience in able body and Para swimming. Additionally, Peter has and continues to be involved at the executive and board level at the club and provincial level. As many volunteer officials begin, Peter was first a swim parent but quickly he became involved by volunteering at non-competitive pup meets. By 1998 Peter started his volunteer career as an official by taking the introductory timing clinic. That was the start of almost a twenty year commitment in officiating. Peter is presently an active Level 5 Referee with considerable National experience. He has officiated as a Referee at Western Canadian Championships, Age Group Nationals, and Canadian Senior Swimming Championships. Peter has also officiated in various capacities at Commonwealth Trials, Pan Am Trials and World Trials and will be officiating at the upcoming Olympic Trials in Toronto. In addition, Peter has officiated at several IPC Para Swimming Events, including as a Starter at the 2011 Pan Pacific IPC Swimming Championships. In addition, Peter is a regular senior official for all Special Olympics and Masters Swim meets. Peter is the most active official in our province having attended close to 90% of all competitive swim meets over the last five years. In fact volunteering as an official alone requires Peter working close to 30 weekends/year in the pool environment here in Winnipeg and across the country. Some meets lasting up to 6 days. In addition to being an active official, Peter is the Provincial Officials Director and Chairperson of the Manitoba Swim Officials Association (MSOA). In this volunteer position Peter is responsible for the development of all swim officials within the Province of Manitoba. This involves the maintenance of a database of active officials, the development of new officials and the promotion of educational programming for officials. Also, Peter is solely responsible for the scheduling of all senior swim officials at more than 70 competitive swim sessions held in the province annually. In the past twenty years Peter has conducted clinics at all levels of officiating. This has involved hundreds of parents, swimmers and even students from local high schools. These efforts have resulted in a database of over 600 officials trained and able to officiate at various levels of swimming here in the province and across the country. It would be a very rare circumstance to hold a swim meet in Manitoba and not find more than a few officials that have been trained by Peter including the majority of the senior official s ranks. In fact, Peter is known for his willingness to educate in various situations here in Winnipeg and in rural communities. Working hard to digitize all training clinics Peter has been able to provide clinics on a one to one basis at locations as diverse as the local Tim Horton s, dining room tables or the bleachers during swim practice or for larger groups in boardrooms, classrooms, swim decks and most recently via Skype conferencing. Dedicated to educating any willing swim parent and creating more officials/volunteers for this sport, Peter will do whatever is required to reach out and find that
next volunteer official. If a person has the time and expresses an interest Peter can and will whip out his ipad and conduct a clinic. As a volunteer on the administration side of swimming the Nominee s first involvement was in 1997 with the St. James Seals assisting with the pups meets and later with travel management issues. His involvement continued with the St. James Seals as a member of various ad hoc committees. In 2007, Peter continued his involvement in the administration area when his own swimmers moved to the Manta Swim Club. Peter was elected to this club s Board of Directors and assumed the position of Vice President of Finance. Peter remained involved at the Club Board level for several years after which he was nominated and elected to the Board of Directors of Swim Manitoba in 2012. Once on the Board Peter assumed a position on the Finance Committee, the ad hoc Human Resources Committee and the Sport Committee. The latter being responsible for the oversight of all technical and operational sport performance matters and to help develop programming consistent with the goals for athlete performance. In 2015, Peter was re-elected to the Board of Directors of Swim Manitoba and subsequently elected to the position of President and Chairperson of Swim Manitoba. Peter s involvement at the national level goes beyond his assignments as an official at national meets. As the Provincial Officials Chair and the Chairperson of the MSOA Peter has attended the last two National Swimming Officials Congresses held in Calgary and Ottawa to represent Manitoba. As a Board Member and the current President of Swim Manitoba Peter has also attended the last two Swim Canada Annual General Meetings as a voting delegate representing Manitoba s concerns. Typically Peter s volunteer responsibilities as the MSOA Chairperson, Provincial Officials Director and President of Swim Manitoba occupies between 25 and 40 hours per week depending on the time of year. The Nominee s ability to make a significant contribution to the enhancement and development of sport programs: Through his Board and Executive positions at the PSO level combined with his position as the Chairperson of the MSOA Peter is in a very unique position to introduce and collaborate on many initiatives within the sport. Working with his volunteer colleagues Peter has been directly involved in addressing several key issues in the sport. This including the development of the vision and mission for Swim Manitoba, re-inclusion of Varsity swimming to the championship calendar, enhancement of coaching education within the province especially in rural communities, enhanced delivery of official s education particularly in northern communities, increased mentoring and communication efforts between Senior and intermediate/beginning officials and increased focus on competition based funding to stress elite performances. Future initiatives planned by Peter are to develop a coach education program aimed to enhance the awareness and knowledge of coaches that have athletes with, a reorganization of the Swim Manitoba office to stream-line coach/athlete education further and to further develop specialized and elite training opportunities already initiated by the Executive Director. Also plans include the upgrading and enhancement of competition/meets delivery and management specifically the electronics area of meet management.
How the Nominee exemplifies the spirit, philosophy, and goal of sport: There is never a family holiday where Peter does not set time aside for the sport. Travelling with his family around the world in 2006 he planned stopovers near competitive pools to satisfy the desire of his own young swimmers to get in the water. They even managed to train and compete with a local Australian team during an extended stay on the Gold Coast. It is not unusual for Peter to Skype call or respond to emails or texts on swimming matters even if he is in the middle of a bike race or the side of a ski hill. He is known to always carry a whistle, rule book and IPad filled with policies, bylaws and clinics just in case he is needed. Peter believes very strongly that swimming and sport in general is an important key to life. He exemplifies this everyday as he essentially has immersed himself in this sport and prides himself in motivating others to be involved. Examples of leadership, innovation, positive influence exhibited by the nominee: As a St. James Seals parent back in 2005/06 this Nominee created a first of its kind system of videotaping for swimmer s races. Positioning himself in a crow s nest position and running his own extension cords to tap into the nearest outlet Peter videotaped swimmers races. Then using personal routers and laptops he immediately transferred the race video to the coach s laptop on deck to provide immediate visual feedback to the swimmer. Bear in mind that this was all done 10 years ago well before blue tooth, IPads, IPhones and wide band Internet connectivity. It was a one of a kind system that was at the time not present anywhere in the province. While a member of the Manta Swim Club, Peter modernized the financial recording systems of the club and provided proper budgeting controls that allowed the team to obtain a state of the art portable video system along with several other wish list items that enhanced the training of the club s athletes. As a Chair of the MSOA and the Provincial Officials Director, Peter rewrote many of the dated national officiating clinics and converted them to digital formats. Then by utilizing Skype Peter introduced the delivering of clinics at all levels to remote locations such as Northern Manitoba. This has resulted in cost savings with regards to the delivery of this educational component to official s development. Peter s best attribute is his belief that you must motivate and lead those around you through actions. More importantly that it is everyone s responsibility to give back to society in some way. Furthermore, Peter follows a philosophy that it is important every athlete, coach or volunteer realize his or her own abilities and potential. Peter exhibits this belief through his dedication to putting in whatever amount of time is required to improve the sport and to motivate others to do the same. With an upbeat message of let s put smiles on athletes faces Peter helps to foster an environment that allows each athlete, coach or volunteer to realize their own abilities and to reach their own potential. Peter is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Children s Rehabilitation Foundation (CRF) in Manitoba. His involvement with that organization stems out of his involvement as VP of Finance with the Manta Swim Club. The coach of the Manta Swim Club proposed the club hold a fundraising event to support this Foundation. Peter was asked to assist in creating and managing the special event. Out of that involvement Peter was provided an opportunity to join the volunteer Board of the CRF. He is now entering his fourth year on the CRF Board and is also on their Executive and Human Resources Committees. The vision of the CRF is For all children to have the support required to realize their abilities. It is this same philosophy that Peter brings to the sport of swimming. He believes the sport is a cradle to grave life skill. As well as in sport, his goals are to put in place any and all programs and initiatives required to allow all that participate to realize their own abilities and potentials.
Exceptional circumstances and/or special challenges the Nominee has overcome: While this Nominee was developing as an official and administrator, Peter was also developing and growing an entrepreneurial venture in the travel field along with being a devoted father and husband. As with Peter s volunteer swimming career his entrepreneurial venture grew and eventually became a National Leader in its own sector and was the target of a friendly purchase by the world s largest company in that same sector based out of Great Britain. An abundant amount of energy would not be an understatement of Peter. Essentially Peter believes the potential of our Manitoba athletes, coaches and volunteers/officials must be fostered regardless of the level their potential takes them. In a world of personal bests it is Peter s goal that every athlete, coach and volunteer be provided the tools to attain their own PB in whatever they do in swimming and life.