McCannel gets the job
Apr. 23, 2010 - Regina Leader-Post
By Ian Hamilton
Bruce McCannel officially can take the word "interim" off his business cards.
Not that it was ever there.
"I forgot to put 'interim' on the ones I had made last year," the 28-year-old Regina product said with a chuckle Thursday. "I saved some money."
The University of Regina announced Thursday that McCannel had been named head coach of the Cougars cross-country and track and field teams. He had held the job on an interim basis since April of 2009, when Carla Nicholls went on leave to take a job with Athletics Canada.
After Nicholls resigned from the U of R on Jan. 27 to continue full-time with Athletics Canada, McCannel applied for the job.
His cause was helped by the Cougars men's squad winning the team titles at the Canada West cross-country championships and at the conference track and field championships. The men's track and field team also accumulated a school-record 41 points at the CIS meet en route to a seventh-place finish.
Regina's women's team finished fifth at the Canada West meet and 15th at nationals under McCannel's tutelage.
"He basically had gone through a year-long interview," U of R director of athletics Dick White said Thursday when asked why McCannel had been chosen. "There was little doubt in the review we'd done that he was an outstanding candidate. As we continued the formal process, there was no doubt that he was the best candidate."
White said there was "a very small pool" of applicants for the job, which also told the search committee something about its choice.
"(The low number) didn't concern me a bit because, No. 1, you only need one outstanding candidate and we had that in Bruce," White said. "I also thought it was an endorsement of Bruce by his colleagues in Regina, across Western Canada and across Canada that he had done a good job."
McCannel, a former star with the Cougars, was the team's volunteer jumps coach for three seasons while working as a policy analyst in the taxation and intergovernmental affairs branch of the Saskatchewan Ministry of Finance.
He took a year's leave of absence from that job to fill in for Nicholls, and that leave was to end May 1. Now, McCannel will concentrate full-time on his duties at the U of R.
"The plans for the year don't change at all," he said. "I had planned everything for the year as if I was going to be the guy. It's really reassuring and it makes me comfortable to know that I am the guy and that Dick and the university have the faith in me to take the interim tag off."
That said, McCannel knows he has to move the program forward. That includes the successful recruiting of high school athletes from around the province and across the country, as well as getting Cougars alumni involved in helping to raise funds for scholarships.
For McCannel, the change in title from interim head coach to permanent head coach won't affect his approach.
"I want to be able to do a good job every year," he said. "I put pressure on myself to do the best job I possibly can for the team, so that doesn't change. This year, I want to do the exact same thing again. I want to do that every year."