Tragedy to championship: Grande Prairie’s Gilson coach of year

One of the top things NFL Canada is involved with is their annual youth coach of the year award, which has recognized football coaches doing great things all over Canada since 1999. This year's winner may be the best story yet, though. The award very deservingly went to Rick Gilson, the principal and football coach at Grande Prairie Composite High School in Alberta, who rallied a team, a school and a community through an unbelievably tragic car crash that killed four players and critically injured a fifth. Gilson's Warriors pulled off an incredible 40-0 win over the rival Sexsmith Sabres the week after the crash and went on to win their regional championship 30-14 over the Peace River Pioneers before falling to the Bev Facey Falcons in the provincial quarterfinals.

Gilson is being recognized for far more than merely the team's success on the field, though. Perhaps the most impressive thing he did this year was how he helped bring a school and a community wracked by tragedy together. Here's a submission from community member Darren Robinson about Gilson that was quoted in the NFL Canada release.

The award's nice on a couple of levels. On one, it comes with $5,000 in football equipment for the school, which will certainly help; maintaining a football team is never easy financially, especially with limited education budgets, so that will definitely be a benefit to the Warriors. The award also gives some much-deserved recognition to Gilson, which is a great thing considering the incredible job he's done in very trying circumstances. He'll be a guest of NFL Canada at this year's Vanier Cup and will be honoured at the Vanier Cup championship breakfast on Friday, Nov. 25, which is also quite cool.

There are plenty of incredible youth coaches across Canada, though, so this award certainly wasn't Gilson's by default. NFL Canada did a great job of publicizing this, including running commercials with former Pittsburgh Steelers' running back Jerome Bettis, and they got tons of submissions. Over 600 submissions nominating more than 400 coaches from across the country were received, which makes for a pretty hefty winnowing task.

When you look at the other runners-up, it shows how impressive the field is. From Barrie, Ontario, Eastview Secondary School's Joe Karwacki is a bilateral amputee who lost his legs in a railway accident during his time as a CN employee in 2004, but has gone on to inspire and motivate countless youth players. The other runner-up is Roberto "Bubba" Allen from Ontario's Scarborough Minor Football program; Allen has coached 16 fall seasons and 11 summer seasons and inspired many inner-city kids without many resources to great football success. He was nominated by a former player he introduced to football, Orlando Franklin, currently an offensive tackle with the NFL's Denver Broncos. Both Karwacki and Allen will receive $2,500 in equipment for their programs, which will help them as well as Gilson continue to make a difference for young people. Youth football's the key to developing the next wave of CIS, CFL and perhaps even NFL players and fans, so it's great to see NFL Canada continuing to recognize and support some of the incredible coaching work that's going on there.