Longtime volleyball coach, official Gord Hawkins dies at 67 By Doug Graham The Kingston Whig Standard Local Sports - Tuesday, October 25, 2005 @ 07:00 Gord Hawkins was regarded as Mr. Volleyball in Kingston by the many people across the province who had come to know a man devoted to his sport. Mr. Hawkins, who died last Wednesday after a two-year battle against cancer, was a pillar in the amateur volleyball circle. Mr. Hawkins, 67, was president of the East Region for the Ontario Volleyball Association. He coached and officiated the sport and was the founder and builder of the girls program of the Pegasus Volleyball Club. “Gord was the heart, soul and founder of the youth section of the Pegasus Volleyball Club,” said Brenda Willis, coach of the Queen’s men’s varsity volleyball team. “All the athletes, the coaches and people he met through volleyball, he regarded as his extended family.” The Pegasus club has started a Gord Hawkins Memorial Scholarship Fund. The club already had the Hawk Award, established in 2003 for outstanding contributions and support for grassroots volleyball. He was the original winner of what will now be the Hawk Memorial Award. The scholarship fund will be used to help young athletes to continue to play the sport, something Mr. Hawkins did willingly. “He paid for kids out of his own pocket all the time. Gord would give you the shirt off his back,” Willis said. “He was philosophically opposed to any kid being cut from a team. He would say there has got to be a way to keep them in the volleyball. He went to the length of coaching three teams at once at the under-14 division so nobody would be without a team.” Ernestown Secondary School coach Dale Huddleston called Mr. Hawkins “a wonderful gentleman who provided a lot of really positive experiences for young people.” Mr. Hawkins never looked for the powerful club that could win a championship. “He was the greatest one for parking his ego on the side,” Huddleston said. “The Hawk never had a championship team. He was just coaching to keep kids playing volleyball. “His win percentage wouldn’t have been too great. In terms of wins with the kids, his percentage was way up there.” The Pegasus website was filled with tributes from players and volleyball friends from out of town. “Volleyball is a beautiful thing, mainly because of people in the sport, and there was no one who represented the love we all have for the sport more than Gord. If only we could all make such a difference,” wrote Paul Edwards of Ottawa. “He was such a wonderful man and I will always associate Kingston volleyball with Gord,” read another, from Cathy O’Doherty of Ottawa. Every summer Mr. Hawkins would be involved in a volleyball camp in Madawaska, where he had a distinct way of stamping his popularity with the young players. Each year the cabin with the highest returns received an award and, more often than not, it was the cabin over which Mr. Hawkins was presiding. Ted Carson met Mr. Hawkins in the mid-1970s, when he coached Mr. Hawkins’s daughters, Lisa and Stephanie. Both teachers, Carson and Mr. Hawkins continued to meet around volleyball, either through coaching, officiating or through the Pegasus club. “He was a real gentle, nice, kind man,” Carson said. “Gord never forgot anybody that he ever met.” A trademark of Mr. Hawkins was the ever-present photo album, filled with pictures of the last event he attended. “He always had that album with him,” Huddleston said. Mr. Hawkins remained active in volleyball until the last week of his life. He was scheduled to hand out medals at a club tournament Saturday, expecting to be out of the hospital by then. “There was a lot of teams at the medal presentation even though the teams [in the final] weren’t from Kingston,” Carson said. “They all knew Gord and he meant a lot to them.” Mr. Hawkins graduated from Royal Military College in 1961. He served three years in the navy before going into a teaching career. He taught at several Kingston and area high schools, ending up at Queen Elizabeth. He was a lifelong advocate for the Canadian Armed Forces and was an active alumnus, presenting yearly the book award sponsored by the RMC Ex-Cadet Club to graduates at high school convocations. Willis remembers her many trips to Toronto with Mr. Hawkins to attend OVA executive meetings. “He was a kind man,” Willis said. “If there was a single world to describe him, it was ‘delightful.’ He said that a lot.   “Delightful. That was Gord.”