Freestyle Ontario Hires Manager of Sport
TORONTO, ON - Freestyle Ontario is proud to announce the hiring of Heather Ross McManus as its new Manager of Sport. Heather brings a wealth of experience to the Freestyle Ontario team in the areas she will manage; high performance, athlete development, and coach training.
“I am thrilled to have Heather join the Freestyle Ontario team,” said Executive Director, Eli Budd. “To have the opportunity to bring someone on board who helped build many of the frameworks our athlete and coach development systems rely upon is amazing. Her extensive experience in designing sport systems, combined with her coaching and athletic experience, makes me confident that she will improve our organization’s overall capacity, program quality, and level of service. Under Heather’s leadership, I believe Freestyle Ontario will continue to be a major source of Freestyle Canada national team athletes.”
As a member of the Canadian National Trampoline Team - Heather reached the pinnacle of her sport - competing in the 2004 Olympic Final in Athens. After retiring, she’s turned her passion for sport into creating and developing systems for the next generation of athletes.
Within the gymnastics system she’s served as Junior National Team advisor, is a Master Coach Developer, and has worked with Gymnastics Canada on updates to their NCCP pathway.
While her career as an athlete was in gymnastics, Heather has gravitated to freestyle over the last decade due to the innovative nature of the sport, and infectious passion of the freestyle community.
Heather was part of the group at Freestyle Canada that developed Freestyle Canada’s internationally respected air coaching pathway and contributed to the development of Freestyle Canada’s Acrobatic Skill Matrix.
She has worked with Freestyle Canada NextGen athletes and national team coaches. She continues to be a leading resource for acrobatic training within the Canadian freestyle system.
As a Master Coach Developer, Heather has worked with Freestyle Ontario and Freestyle Canada for close to a decade on facilitating Air 1, Air 2, and Air Doubles on Trampoline courses, and training coaches in our air pathway.
Most recently, Heather has served as the Program Co-Ordinator for Fortune Freestyle. She supported Fortune Freestyle coaches in their development, and implemented systems that improved Fortune Freestyle’s program planning, athlete tracking, selection criteria, and leadership structure.
Not only does Heather bring a wealth of freestyle knowledge to the table, she also brings tremendous experience within the broader Canadian sport system.
Heather has seven years of experience as a Long-Term Development Advisor for the Sport for Life Society. Through her work with the Sport for Life Society, Heather worked with the Canadian High-Performance Strategy Implementation Working Group.
She helped author national physical literacy and competition guidebooks. She also collaborated with Own the Podium to help build principles to assist sports in aligning their Gold Medal Profile and Athlete Development Matrix.
To top it all off, Heather is a proud freestyle parent, with sons Darren, Quin and Gavin competing on the Freestyle Ontario Timber Tour for the past several years.
“I could not be more excited to join the Freestyle Ontario team and continue working to make freestyle skiing in Ontario a sport that fosters excellence, in an athlete-centred system,” said Heather.