coach of the year scott kent

track & field school: Earl Marriott (Surrey)

The best coaches are people who have found their calling, and if Scott Kent didn’t discover his until a little later in life, he’s making up for it now.

“I fell into sales but then I asked myself if it was what I really wanted to do for the rest of my life,” the Vancouver native explains. “I just knew that I liked being part of a community. Now, I look forward to going to work. I don’t know what drives me, I just know that it does.”

In a figurative sense, what drives Head of the Class 2015’s Coach of the Year, as voted by readers of The Province, is an inner motor that never sits on idle. For Kent, a 12-year Surrey fireman, it’s about instilling the joy of running in kids, and about giving them the ability to see that through sport they can follow a path to higher understanding.

Yet in a more literal sense, as his nominator Simran Sarai so loquaciously stated: “His full-time job is as a firefighter. He comes from saving people’s lives to helping make ours better. Last year, he showed up at one of our races in his uniform driving, you guessed it, a fire truck.”

At 51, the former Killarney Secondary grad, who went on to develop his coaching template while competing for UBC under the legendary coach Dr. Doug Clement, has become the living embodiment of the coaching lifestyle.

Guiding both the cross-country and track and field teams at Surrey’s Earl Marriott Secondary, Kent has also found the time to found a successful community club (Coastal Track), work with the middle-distance teams at Langley’s Trinity Western University, and give frequent clinics to marathoners at Surrey’s Peninsula Runners.

And it’s the high school-aged athlete that Kent loves working with most.

“I get a real charge seeing personal growth,” he explains. “To get them excited about training on a rainy, dark November night where they have to have a vision and a trust in me that in some cases, they aren’t going to see the fruits of their labours for years. At no other time in their athletic careers can they have such leaps and transformations.”

And for Kent, being voted HOC’s Coach of the Year brings a tangible gain to the intangible element of program building at Earl Marriott.

As part of his $1,200 prize pack, Kent has won a $750 grant from The Province, which will be put toward athletic facilities at the school.

“There is no legacy at Earl Marriott, except for the athletes,” Kent says. “We have no track equipment. We don’t even have any hurdles, so that’s where the money will go.”

For a man who has taught all his athletes to face their figurative hurdles head on, it seems all too fitting.