When Lucas Rotondo (BSM ’24) was invited to participate in a sport research project supporting Indigenous hockey players, he didn\u2019t realize he was taking the first step on an unexpected journey.<\/p>\n
Then an undergraduate Sport Management student, Rotondo was eager to develop his technical skills. Beyond leading him to his current master\u2019s program at Brock, however, the experience also proved to be an opportunity for personal growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose opportunities allowed me to reconnect with a significant part of who I am, which was so impactful for me,\u201d says Rotondo, a member of the Michipicoten First Nation. \u201cAnd as I look back, those were important moments in my personal learning and healing as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Led by Assistant Professor of Sport Management Taylor McKee, Rotondo and fellow Sport Management master\u2019s student Nick Lacoste (BSM ’23) recently completed the project \u201cMaking us whole again: Developing culturally appropriate, evidence driven evaluations for Indigenous sport organizations in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team collaborated with the Manitoba Aboriginal Sports and Research Council (MASRC)<\/a> to develop ways of gathering, analyzing and presenting Indigenous hockey data to better understand Indigenous athlete experiences and how to support Indigenous hockey in Manitoba. This work was supported by Mitacs<\/a> through the Mitacs Accelerate program.<\/p>\n \u201cMost evaluations have been led by non-Indigenous government agencies and third parties whose sport development goals may not align with Indigenous organizations,\u201d McKee says. \u201cThese metrics have also often been used to act for Indigenous communities rather than to work with them through respectful collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n The project builds on earlier research<\/a>, funded by the federal government through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, in which McKee and his team collaborated with Indigenous sport organizations to create evaluations in line with Indigenous Data Sovereignty<\/a>.<\/p>\n Under the leadership of the MASRC, Rotondo and Lacoste attended major Indigenous sporting events across Canada, including the National Aboriginal Hockey Championships (NAHC)<\/a> and the North American Indigenous Games<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lacoste, whose academic background is in statistics and data management, tracked live statistics for Team Manitoba games at the NAHC. He shared visuals and data reports with the coaches at each intermission and submitted full game reports each day to both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams. He also provided video coaching during intermissions to players and coaches. Both Team Manitoba teams won gold at last year\u2019s NAHC.<\/p>\n With Rotondo\u2019s help, Lacoste produced an interactive map<\/a> of high-level women and men Indigenous hockey players across North America. The tool has since been used to promote local success stories and has been adopted by Hockey Indigenous as part of the sport organization\u2019s database work.<\/p>\n \u201cThe interactive map celebrates the breadth of Indigenous hockey talent across Canada,\u201d Lacoste says. \u201cParents and athletes have used this map to learn about local Indigenous hockey connections.\u201d<\/p>\n For the major Indigenous sporting events, Rotondo \u2014 drawing upon his passion for communications \u2014 took photographs, produced videos of the athletes in action and publicized the games on social media.<\/p>\n His photos were published in MASRC\u2019s History of Excellence<\/em> book, and he helped process nominations for the Tom Longboat Awards<\/a>, an annual recognition of outstanding Indigenous athletes in honour of the record-breaking long-distance runner Tom Longboat<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rotondo\u2019s work paved the way for him to complete a year-long communications contract with the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Multiculturalism and the Ontario Ministry of Sport before starting his master\u2019s program.<\/p>\n Lacoste, who is wrapping up his master\u2019s and expects to be finished this fall, now tracks and monitors hockey policies for the Ontario Hockey Federation and is an Assistant to the Governance Advisor at Hockey Canada.<\/p>\n He says he has \u201ca much greater sense of inequities and privilege\u201d in sport \u2014 which are largely based on race, class and access to sport opportunities \u2014 that has directly influenced how he approaches policy work in Canadian hockey spaces.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore the Mitacs project, I felt that I was destined to work in the NHL, to work with the biggest success stories,\u201d he says. \u201cWhile that door hasn\u2019t closed, I now feel more motivated to work on supporting safe and positive hockey experiences for the 99 per cent who haven\u2019t made it to the top.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Lucas Rotondo (BSM ’24) was invited to participate in a sport research project supporting Indigenous hockey players, he didn\u2019t realize he was taking the first step on an unexpected journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":108664,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,7484,3319,188,55,6833,1,5],"tags":[15138,5067,4753,7488,13524,7842,15081,3325,10657],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108657"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108657"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108666,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108657\/revisions\/108666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}