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“It’s important for everyone to have contact with excellence in sport,” says paddling coach Anthony (Tony) Hall, a man who is responsible for many excellent Nova Scotian canoers and kayakers.

The personal coach of Olympian and World Champion paddler Steve Giles for twenty years, Hall has worked tirelessly to put Nova Scotia on the map when it comes to international recognition for paddling. In addition to Giles, Olympic team members Leslie-Anne Young, Glen Girard, Dan Howe, Corrinna Kennedy, Marie-Josée Gibeau-Ouimet, and Peter Giles have all spent time under Hall’s capable tutelage.

Hailing from Dartmouth, Hall paddled at the Senobe club as a kid before becoming involved with coaching day programs. Following his graduation from Dalhousie’s Physical Education program (during which time he also played club soccer at Dalhousie), Hall started off coaching volleyball and then landed a position coaching paddlers in British Columbia.

After spending a few years in BC, Hall returned to Nova Scotia at a time when very few people were professional paddling coaches. When Ron Comeau asked Tony if he would coach the Orenda Canoe Club, Hall insisted that paddlers needed to train year-round, and he was soon hired on as one of Canada’s first full-time year-round paddling coaches.

Hall took over Orenda, its old garage full of beat-up equipment, and a group of enthusiastic kids from Lake Echo, a then small rural community of only 800 families.

Within three years, Orenda went from a fledgling club to national champions, becoming only the second Nova Scotia club to ever claim the national title in 1987. Orenda soon became the model for clubs in Atlantic Canada, and Hall’s athletes went on to a long string of success stories.

“[Tony’s] technical ability knowledge was superb and he had a knack for communicating with almost any athlete,” recounts Steve Giles, who was part of the Orenda Club.

“Lots of excellence evolved from that period,” says Hall, who is overcome with pride as he recites the roll call of the Orenda kids and their achievements. Among them are many Olympians, international competitors — such as Matt Patterson, Dustin Whalen, Brian Burns, Graham Cobb, Cathy Breckenridge, and Bernie Irvin — and athletes who are now coaches including — Troy Comeau, Trevor Marshall, Corey Firth, Rob Baert and Albert McDonald.

“As kids, these Olympians and World Champions all lived within eight blocks of one another,” Hall says. “There’s a direct connection to what it did for the community, and that’s what sport is all about.”

Despite the fact that the Orenda club had to share boats and go without washrooms clue to limited resources, Hall was always optimistic that success in sport came from doing the best with what you’ve got.

He encouraged active fundraising and impromptu ball hockey games. “Things were always done to the benefit of the group.”

Hall believed coaching wasn’t all about telling athletes to be faster and stronger, but about teaching people to love every aspect of their sport. Since there are no shortcuts to training, he aimed to make everything fun.

“Fun was getting up at five in the morning; fun was running in the snow,” he says.

Hall always made sure every club member was included so that everyone would be committed to one another. “We were committed to making it good for everybody, ” he says. “What everyone did was important — they all shared in the success of people like Steve.”

A former soccer player at Dalhousie, Hall explains that his coaching model comes from watching his dad coach soccer and living in an area where you needed every player you could get, so everyone who participated had value.

He was also inspired by his mom, who organized softball and bowling leagues, and by all the coaches he had who dedicated a lifetime to sport — “the guys who coached every team.”

From high school onwards, he watched coaches in every sport in order to learn new techniques, applying pacing methods he learned from track coaches to paddling training. Hall admits that he was always willing to try something new, reminiscing about the “baked potato diet of 1991” that he tried with Giles.

After coaching roles with the province and the women’s national kayak team, Hall coached kids in Gainesville, Florida, but still kept in contact with Giles, volunteering as his personal coach.

“l truly believe,” says Giles, “that without Tony at my side I would not have achieved the success that I did.”

Bio Courtesy of Katie Wooler