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Longtime coach had knack for getting the most out of athletes

Vital Shank, who helped build the local athletics scene, died June 6

For five decades the sidelines at local track and cross-country meets have been dominated by a booming voice. 

Whether it was encouraging athletes from the sidelines or announcing, Vital Shank was a fixture at the events. He died June 6 after battling non-Hodgkin lymphoma for more than six years. He was 75.

Weeks before he died, his voice echoed through the community one last time.

At the Vital Shank Invitational on May 17, he spent the morning announcing the track meet at the Timmins Regional Athletics and Soccer Complex, which he helped bring to fruition. 

That day, he was presented with a plaque honouring his contributions and thanking him for over five decades of coaching athletes to local, provincial, national and international success.

“He appreciated that and he really perked up that day and had a good time and enjoyed himself. A lot of people were able to see him and thank him, it was a good day,” said Darlene Polowy, who first met Shank when she was an athlete and went on to coach with him and forge a lifelong friendship.

Shank moved to Timmins in the 1970s. 

Originally from Bonfield, Ont., he spent over 20 years teaching. Most of his career was at École secondaire catholique Thériault, but he also spent time at R. Ross Beattie Senior Public School and Timmins High and Vocational School. 

The list of roles he's held and his achievements through the years is long.  

He founded the Timmins Porcupine Track and Field Club, has announced at meets across the country — including the PanAm Games, was the chief dispatcher for the IIHF executive at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, and was inducted into the Timmins Sports Heritage Hall of Fame in 2014. 

He also received the Queen's Jubilee Award, The Sly Apps Special Achievement Award, the Rotary Paul Harris Fellowship, the OFSAA Pete Beach Award, and was  Athletics Canada Coach of the Year and Official of the Year multiple times.

Shank could see something special in an athlete and worked tirelessly to hone their talent.

“He was probably the most dedicated person I’ve ever seen in my life ... if he thought you had some talent or that you had something that was valuable, he would stick you like glue. And sometimes his means were not ... they would be frowned upon now,” laughed longtime friend Mike Novak.

“He would hollar at ya … in the obit I wrote that he would yell at you across the track, he would yell at you everywhere — that’s what he used to do. Then he’d pull you aside and explain why he was yelling at you.”

Joel Ruel was 16 when Shank saw potential and invited him to join the Timmins Porcupine Track and Field Club. 

Being from Hearst, Ruel took the Ontario Northland bus to Timmins on the weekends to travel with the club.

He did a work placement at Theriault during university and Shank ended up being one of his mentors both in teaching and coaching. 

Today, Ruel is the head coach of Theriault's track and field and cross-country running programs. 

"Being from Hearst, Northern Ontario, who knows where I would have been if Vital would not have invited me and influenced me on coming to Timmins,” he said. 

“He was an honest person. He was always willing to tell you what you needed to do to improve and he’d also go out of his way to improve — he would have given the shirt off his back so you could attend a meet or something like that. He put lots of his personal time to help me and to help hundreds if not thousands of people get better in track and field."

'He had a playful side to him'

Shank was Novak's teacher in Grade 7 and 8 at Ross Beattie. He went on to be coached by him and they stayed friends through the years, taking vacations and even volunteering together at the Vancouver Olympics.

In Grade 8, Novak caught a baseball with the wrong hand at recess and broke a finger.

"Vital was the supervisor out in the yard and he came over and said ‘No, no, you dislocated it’ and tugged and broke it, broke it. When I ended up in emerg and they X-rayed it, the doctor went ‘This break is wrong, did somebody pull on the finger?’ And after that, two days later was my Grade 8 grad and I had to shake hands with him with a cast on. He felt guilty about that for a while,” he recalled.

Shank was just starting out in teaching when they met, so he wasn't much older than Novak. 

“He was not your usual run-of-the-mill teacher. He used to wear crazy clothes to class. There’s actually a picture of him that’s going to be at the funeral home today; he would wear a plaid suit. I mean the loudest plaid suit … and that was at a graduation. He would straighten you out when you needed it, but he wouldn’t hold a grudge,” he said.

There was more to Shank than the passionate coach. 

Novak and others interviewed mentioned having many stories that couldn't be printed. 

“He had a playful side to him. He would do things just to see what people would say. He got a job at the 2010 Olympics, he thought he was going to be announcing the hockey games and he ended up being a dispatcher for VIPs," said Novak, who was in Edmonton at the time.

"I drove down to Vancouver, so the two of us worked the Vancouver Olympics and we rubbed shoulders with the elite of hockey past and present." 

A lasting legacy 

Without Shank, athletics in Timmins would not be the same. 

After founding the track club in 1975, Polowy said he provided opportunities for athletes no matter what school they attended. 

"I’m from the east end. It didn’t matter, he was there to provide the best opportunities for you," she said.

"That dedication allowed us to become the best we could be, and it also provided a passion with a lot of the athletes that became the alumni that were instrumental in building the complex. That was his dream along with other people in town, with the Theriault alumni they were able to build that state-of-the-art facility and only with that facility can you have national level championships."

Some of the more special memories Polowy has is taking smaller groups of athletes to championships. 

"He’ll be on the side of the track and his voice is just booming and he’ll say ‘Bouge, bouge’, which I’m not French-speaking but I picked up some words and just ‘Move, move, move’. Once those kids hear that, it just clicks in and they just go for it. He had a knack for just getting the most out of his athletes. I think that he knew what their abilities were and he was able to … have them fulfill their goals. Even though they didn’t know they had the talent, he knew that they did,” she said.

Being in sports means extreme highs and lows. 

One of the lower times for Shank was when one of his star athletes, Justin Lambert-Belanger, was killed in a car crash in 2001.

“He took that very hard and he went out and got a Justin tattoo on his arm, carried it around for the rest of his days. One other thing … he died on Justin’s birthday,” said Novak. 

A reception is being held for Shank tonight (June 8) at Miron-Wilson Funeral Home from 6-8 p.m.