As a UBC varsity volleyball player, Tim Frick helped his team to the 1975-1976 national championship. Unbeknownst to him, his remarkable success on the court would continue in a different capacity.
Frick achieved unprecedented success as head coach of the Canadian women’s wheelchair basketball team from 1990–2009. He led the team to win three consecutive gold medals at the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Paralympic Games, and four consecutive World Championship titles from 1994–2006.
“The overall approach that we took during those years of success was this rule of having unconditional acceptance for each other [and] making sure that everyone’s role on the team was clearly defined,” said Frick.
This included accepting and understanding how people learn in different ways, how people respond differently to things and “awareness of people’s tendencies [and] the acceptance of that, [which] leads to tremendous tolerance.”
His approach to coaching is something Frick attributes to his time at UBC. He played on the varsity volleyball team for five years, graduating from UBC with a bachelor's of physical education (now equivalent to a kinesiology degree) in 1975 and a master’s of education in 1980.
Through the guidance of coaches, professors, colleagues, classmates and teammates at UBC, he not only fell in love with coaching, but “realized that coaching was less about the ‘X’s and O’s’ [but] was more about the interpersonal relationships, humanity and treating people really, really well.”
Reflecting back on his career, Frick said compassion was especially important to his coaching.
“It [is] great to be a content expert, but showing compassion and care and true interest in the welfare of someone’s livelihood is really what counted and made a difference.”
It was also at UBC where Frick was introduced to adaptive sports. During his master's, he connected with a fellow athlete named Rick Hansen, who asked him to coach wheelchair sports. Since Frick knew volleyball well, he started coaching wheelchair volleyball — later expanding to wheelchair track and athletics and wheelchair basketball. Through Hansen and wheelchair basketball, Frick met Terry Fox and ended up coaching him too.
“It created a really cool bond between the three of us,” said Frick, “Those days were the cusp of innovation for sports technology in both wheelchair sports and the prosthetic world. There was no training literature out there. So we had to brainstorm and make it up as we went along. The creativity, innovation and technology part was a lot of fun — plus we just became really good friends and hung out all the time.”
Coaching at UBC would lead to a career that would span nearly 50 years of coaching athletes with disabilities and able-bodied athletes. Frick coached volleyball after graduation at Langara College and even attended Paralympic Games with Hansen in 1984. He started working in sport development with Wheelchair Basketball BC and in 1990, Frick was asked to coach the national women's wheelchair basketball team.
"And I said, 'I'll do it for a year, I promise you that at World Championships next year, the team will have a peak performance... and then after that, you guys can figure it out from there,'" he recalled. After a bronze medal in 1990, Frick came back to coach for the next season to "see how it goes". He would end up coaching the team for 19 years.
Like other coaches of athletes with and without disabilities, Frick sees no difference in the way he coaches when it comes to disabled and able-bodied athletes.
“If you break it down to its most basic level, coaching any sport and any athlete has to be individualized. So from that point of view, [there’s] obviously no difference at all,” he said.
In recognition of the significant contributions and achievements he’s made in coaching, Frick has received numerous awards and honours — including winning the BC Wheelchair Sports Coach of the Millennium, being appointed to the Order of Canada in 2020 and being the first Paralympic coach inducted into the Canadian Hall of Fame.
“The moments [that are] the pinnacles of success [like] when you realize you’re about to win a gold medal are obviously super highlights [but] there’s lots of highlights that occur in just practices,” said Frick, “[Like] a player making their first basket [or] when you see the light bulb go on [in a player] who figures out something that you were trying to wrack your brain to find ways to explain [and] when you leave the gym sometimes and the kid will just say, ‘Thanks coach’ — those moments are fantastic.”
Frick has now retired from direct coaching, but continues to share the sport of wheelchair basketball to more people — including to the future generation.
On Pender Island in BC, Frick established Pender Island School Basketball that has been running for the past 14 years. Children with and without disabilities ages 10 to 17 years old come together to play the sport, and have opportunities to meet Paralympic athletes who talk to the children about awareness, inclusion, adaptations and disability. From these sessions, friendships are formed.
“And so then, a disability becomes something that nobody really notices. They go on adventures together and do stuff together. It’s a great way to develop awareness and a view of the world in terms of accessibility that I think is important for people to know,” said Frick.