Danis blazes trail for women in sport

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This article was published 15/04/2023 (1091 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Tom Kendall’s eyes and ears were at odds.

He watched Pam Danis (nee Flick) light up the best basketball players in the country, winning an under-19 national gold medal for Team Manitoba and an MVP award for her mantle.

But the University of Winnipeg women’s hoops coach heard Danis would not play the game again. The Brandon product was reluctantly heading back to the University of North Dakota to play volleyball. She’d redshirted with the basketball team while on a volleyball scholarship but realized basketball was her true passion.

Danis told basketball coach Gene Roebuck she wanted to only play for him and he replied that she wasn’t good enough for one of his scholarships.

“At that point, it was the first time in my athletic career I had been told I wasn’t good or wasn’t able to join something,” Danis told the Sun via phone from Vancouver.

“Of course, it was everybody else’s fault but mine.”

Longtime Glenlawn Lions coach Bryan Kornberger asked if she’d suit up one more time with the provincial team since nationals were at home at the U of W’s Duckworth Centre.

Danis decided to play solely for the love of the game. She embraced the grind of training and enjoyed every minute.

She lit it up at nationals and Kendall spoke with her father, Dan Flick, definitely interested in signing her.

He took his daughter out to Sorrento’s, the iconic Italian restaurant down the street from the Duckworth, where Danis pondered the idea of joining the Wesmen over her usual Sorrento Salad.

“He goes, ‘Sometimes you gotta make decisions based on what’s best for you, and you got to go with what your heart and what your gut tells you,’” Danis said. “It turned out to be a pretty good decision, I guess.”

Danis helped the Wesmen to a national final appearance in 1992, then started every game as Winnipeg won three straight CIAU — now U Sports — titles. She was named the Brandon Sun’s sportsperson of the year during her senior season.

In the Sun’s feature, Danis hinted at her desire to coach. Kendall suggested his point guard would thrive in that role.

“She’s very good at helping others … that’ll be her role in life,” Kendall told the Sun’s Jason Bell. “I see Pam as a person that will take my job when I’m too old to do it. And nothing would make me happier.

“Pam has a great future ahead of her. She’s not an ordinary person. She’s special.”

Danis went on to coach at St. John’s Ravenscourt High School in Winnipeg, then spent a decade at the helm of the University of Manitoba Bisons. She moved to Cambridge, Ont., and led both volleyball and basketball teams, helping her daughter, Maya, and son, Luc, land with post-secondary volleyball and lacrosse teams, respectively.

Two years ago, she moved to the West Coast for an assistant coach job at Simon Fraser University, which she played against in U Sports before it jumped to the NCAA Division II ranks.

The heights she reached make sense when you look at her Wheat City beginnings. Her journey in sport is filled with successes but is ultimately defined by challenging moments and how she grew through them.

GROWING UP

Danis said she didn’t have much for sports geared specifically toward girls growing up. She spent a lot of time around softball diamonds and hockey rinks and started playing on boys’ teams.

She looks back with profound insights, that her pathway to high-level sports was in many ways paved by men who advocated for her. Early on, it was her dad. In high school, Vincent Massey basketball coaches Stew Farnell and Mike Hill blazed a trail that countless Vikings alumni are grateful for.

“Certainly coach Farnell and coach Hill were instrumental in making sure the women’s basketball team, the girls’ basketball team at Vincent Massey was not only equitable but at that time was probably given more leeway in terms of having opportunities to succeed,” Danis said. “They never compromised with our ability to be successful.”

At the same time, Danis had women like Iris Anderson in softball and Betty Couling, who she said showed her early that females could excel in usually male-dominated sports.

Then there was Linda Kearns, one of Brandon’s first female entrepreneurs who ran a local dance studio.

“They allowed me to see that as a female, I could strive and be unlimited,” Danis said. “There were no barriers put in front of me that I couldn’t do.”

Danis didn’t start playing basketball until Grade 7 but picked it up quickly.

HIGH SCHOOL

She went to Vincent Massey a few years after Farnell and Hill guided the Vikings to provincial championships in 1985 and ’86.

They coupled her athleticism with on-court skills and helped her become one of the best players in Manitoba over the next few years.

But what stands out is the way they valued success in the “three Cs” — on the court, in the classroom and the community. Danis admitted along with her competitiveness came a big ego and immaturity that came out during a varsity game in her Grade 10 year.

The Vikings were struggling to break a press on their home court against a Winnipeg team. She grew frustrated and finally snapped, just handing the ball to an opponent for a free layup.

Hill took her off and sat her down at the end of the bench and said what she did was unacceptable.

“You didn’t quit on yourself, you didn’t quit on your teammates and you didn’t quit while you were representing the school,” said Danis, who got called into principal John Keogh’s office the following Monday. She thought Hill was getting the blame.

“I went in with my stance and my attitude, I sat down and … Mr. Keogh, he proceeded to immediately say how coach Hill had every right to say the things he said to me and was only doing that because he cared.

“I was underperforming and I was better than the person that was being displayed on the floor at the time. It was a profound moment in my growing up to become the person I ultimately have become.”

UNIVERSITY

The Wesmen added Danis after a national semifinal appearance and made it one step further that year, falling 64-51 to Victoria in the gold-medal game.

That was the last game Winnipeg lost for more than two years. Really. It avenged that championship game by beating Victoria 70-63, capping a perfect season with the program’s first national title.

Danis shared the point guard spot with Great Plains Athletic Conference second-team all-star Diane Zunic and then started every game the next two seasons.

Winnipeg native Sandra Carroll led the team, picking up an astounding three straight Nan Copp awards as the CIAU player of the year.

The Wesmen pulverized virtually everyone they played, downing Toronto 90-76 to defend the national crown.

In 1994-95, Winnipeg beat Manitoba by 32 to extend its win streak to 88 games, tying a North American university record.

A rematch with the Bisons was marketed essentially as a coronation. Danis recalls 200 media credentials going out and a national broadcast crew setting up for a sold-out game right before Christmas.

Danis feels Kendall was especially great at a few key things. One was advocating for the women’s program and in turn, demanding excellence on and off the court out of his players. That helped her go from a mediocre student to an academic all-Canadian.

On the court, he kept the team focused on the game ahead and no further. The players practised and pushed each other harder than any opponent could.

Until the week the basketball world was watching, that is. The week Prime Minister Jean Chretien sent a letter Kendall read to the team before the game.

Everyone was ready to watch a record go down. At that point, the only thing crazier than 89 straight wins was if it never happened.

And that’s exactly what happened. Manitoba stunned the nation, winning 64-62.

Danis has never watched that game. The only important one at that point was the next one.

She helped her team to wins over host Hawaii, Louisville and Troy State at a tournament over the break. The Wesmen trounced the Bisons twice to win the GPAC final and once more in the CIAU title game, 72-61 to secure dynasty status.

“I don’t know if we go to Hawaii and we win those games. I don’t know if we win a third national championship. I just think it rebooted and refocused us enough to do what we were supposed to do,” Danis said of the lone loss to the Bisons, who won the next two CIAU championships.

COACHING

While some Wesmen like Carroll headed overseas for professional contracts, Danis finished her degree, got married and started teaching at St. John’s Ravenscourt, a private school in Winnipeg. She guided the Eagles varsity girls to a provincial AAA title in 1998.

She was happy to stay there but life had bigger basketball plans for her. Danis started her master’s degree at the U of M and stopped by women’s basketball coach Coleen Dufresne’s office one day. Dufresne asked her to assist her in 2000-01, her 17th season on the job.

A year later, Dufresne was tapped for the Bisons’ athletic director job and Danis stepped into her shoes. She ran the team for 11 years, compiling an overall record of 154-192 and earning 10 playoff victories.

Danis also had her first kid just before starting there and her second soon after. She looks back not with regret but with a humble recognition of the ways she wishes she could have better served her team and family.

These days, she tells others in her position to ask for help when needed.

“By the end, I was a part-time mom and a part-time coach and not very good at either one of those,” Danis said.

Her former players, however, have high praise for her.

Uzoma Asagwara — who now serves as MLA for Union Station in Winnipeg — played for a provincial team Danis assistant coached after her St. Norbert Celtics edged Danis’s Eagles 48-44 in the AAA provincial final in 2000.

Asagwara was a sophomore playing up on the varsity team and won MVP of the tournament even though they had little elite basketball experience.

Asagwara said playing for Team Manitoba was overwhelming at times. They didn’t have parents travelling for road games or attending local ones with a mom working full time and raising five children.

They realized Danis was special when the team travelled via train to Calgary.

“She sensed that I might benefit from a bit more support and she picked up on that. She was just there. She was there as a coach but she was also there as a support and mentor without me having to ask for it,” Asagwara said.

“Pam made a point of hovering around and being present … and basically made sure we were safe and we were OK.

“That was an approach that really allowed for me to feel comfortable making mistakes as an athlete, asking a ton of questions. She never made me feel bad for asking questions. In fact, she encouraged it.”

These days, Asagwara is part of the provincial government’s official opposition with the NDP. The first queer Black MLA in the province’s history, they stand up for Manitobans who they feel are being oppressed by the current government and represent a voice for the voiceless with their platform.

That often means asking questions the Progressive Conservatives don’t want to answer and dodge or attempt to discredit.

Looking back, Asagwara feels Danis helped them find their voice through basketball and the environment she created where speaking up, asking questions and competing intensely were celebrated.

“I walked into any other space with an increased sense of self-awareness and self-confidence and self-assuredness and skills around how I can advocate for myself in spaces, how I can ask questions and get answers, how I can get the outcomes that I want to see achieved,” Asagwara said.

“All of the things she taught us on the court translated to making us stronger people and students and better community members off the court.”

Danis developed an affinity for using sport to connect with Indigenous communities. For Michele Sung (nee Hynes), who played five years for her and took over as head coach in 2012, the first thing that comes to mind is the team’s retreats to Skownan First Nation.

“Being an athlete from outside the province, I didn’t have a ton of knowledge of Indigenous communities in Manitoba. It was pretty powerful because it gave us context to how big of a role a university sports team can have in being a role model for females playing sports,” Sung said.

“The progression our province and our university has gone on over the last 10 years of trying to really engage in truth and reconciliation … I feel like I was really fortunate to have hands-on experiences so when I did come to the table as a professional, I could continue the work she had done.”

Unprompted, Sung specifically mentions Danis’s three Cs as one of the messages she tries to carry forward with the Bisons.

And whether she knew it at the time, Sung thanked Danis for her work in the best possible way when she and her husband, Eric, invited her to their wedding.

“When I get invited to be part of one of my former players’ weddings is, to me, the pinnacle of why I do what I do,” Danis said. “That’s such an important time in that athlete’s life when they commit to someone else. For me to be part of that ceremony, part of that community and family is something I cherish beyond anything that happens on the basketball court.

“I’ve had so many amazing women that I’ve now been part of their small, small pathway to success that it’s really, really cool looking at it now how many tremendously gifted women have played this game and are doing some amazing things in the community.”

MOVES

Danis took a leave of absence in 2012 and ultimately left the Bisons for good as she moved to Cambridge, Ont.

It was a chance to put family first while staying involved in coaching volleyball and basketball at a few middle and high schools.

Maya ended up at Fanshawe College, winning back-to-back Ontario Colleges Athletic Association volleyball titles as a setter. Luc plays NCAA Division II lacrosse for Belmont Abbey in North Carolina. Their mom is grateful for the way they paved their own roads.

“My kids always saw the basketball was something that took mom away from them and it was always mom’s thing,” Danis said.

“Even though both of them were incredibly gifted in basketball … it was always mom’s thing. I’m really proud they were able to find their own identity not only in sport but in life.”

Danis and her husband split a couple of years ago when the chance to join Bruce Langford’s coaching staff at Simon Fraser University arose.

Being part of the NCAA, she attended the 2022 Women’s Final Four in Minneapolis. That tournament, and especially the 2023 edition with Iowa’s Caitlin Clark generating record-breaking ratings and attention for the women’s game, have been uplifting moments for someone who had to scratch and claw for respect and equity in sport.

Perhaps one of the coolest pieces of inspiration hangs on the wall of Langford’s office. It features his daughter, Danielle, and the basketball team she works as the manager of player rehabilitation for called the Golden State Warriors, celebrating their 2022 NBA Finals victory.

Danielle, the one who led SFU to the 2005 U Sports title with a 70-60 win over Asagwara and the host Wesmen, is the only woman in the photo.

“That’s inspiring,” Danis said. “Any athlete or girl that comes into our campus, we highlight that you can be part of a world championship team and not be a player. How cool is that?”

Danis grew up in a time opportunities in sports were far from equal. Her time at the U of W, being in Winnipeg’s inner city, helped her realize the platform she had and the importance of using it to make the world better for others.

She certainly has. Her message to young athletes is simple and powerful.

“Find your voice and own your space,” Danis said.

“If you can do that through a sport you love, that saying and those skill sets are going to go a long way outside of your sport experience.”

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com

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