Coach of the year: Frank Giallonardo
As a member of Burnaby South Secondary School’s learning support services team, Frank Giallonardo is part of a group of teachers dedicated to helping students, some with exceptional learning needs, reach their potential. One of the team’s stated mantras? “Supporting diversity as a natural and inherent condition of the school environment.”
Each year, Head of the Class puts out the call to high schools across B.C. looking for those dedicated individuals who best exemplify the qualities of our Coach of the Year.
And this year, after our voting process was complete, the winner was a man who seems to have made that mantra his mission statement in the classroom and within the greater community of a school he sees as extended family.
Burnaby South, like every high school, is both its own community and a part of a much bigger picture.
And within its hallways is an ultra-diverse student body, so many of whom are in search of someone with the gift of purposeful mentorship.
“Frank sees the potential in every student, in every athlete and he doesn’t see what he does as being extraordinary,”Burnaby South principal Victoria Lee says of Giallonardo, who beyond his classroom duties is a coach, athletic administrator and teacher-sponsor of so many clubs and teams in both the school and the district that it’s difficult to keep count.“I have never seen anyone do so much for the kids.”
Besides coaching varsity soccer at the school, he is the longtime Burnaby-New Westminster league convener for the sport.
Yet, he also sponsors virtually any team or club at the school that finds itself in need, from rugby to cricket to ultimate to the newly-formed Muslim Students Club, a group formed to help promote and encourage better understanding of the faith.
“He is more than a coach for us, he is our Mr. Do-It-All,”explains South athletic director Robbie Puni. “He has a heart of gold.”
And, yet, there is unease on Giallonardo’s part simply for the fact he is receiving recognition for acts of service which, to him, are purely organic.
“I have never been comfortable about talking about why I do it,”Giallonardo, 45, says. “I just do it because it needs to be done. I always tell people that a long time ago, someone did the same for me, so I would like to repay that.”