The Ottawa Sport Council is pleased to introduce Greg Rampley as our latest Community Sport Hero!
Greg and his family moved to Ottawa in January 2011 and he rapidly immersed himself in a range of volunteer roles in local lacrosse and basketball, including coach, director, scheduler and president of the Gloucester Lacrosse Association and Ontario Zone 5.
“I got an opportunity to meet some really amazing people and some really talented kids and really enjoyed seeing how they grow,” reflects Rampley, who first got involved as an assistant coach on his son’s team.
Rampley believes that “being part of a team and working together to achieve goals” is among the most valuable benefits young athletes experience in sport, “and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose – you have to learn how to deal with that and learn from it.”
Among Rampley’s proudest moments came last season as an assistant coach for an Ottawa Shooting Stars U19 boys’ house league team. That’s because the head coach of that team was his son, who’s now in his final year of college.
“I felt very lucky to get that chance,” underlines Rampley, who also treasured coaching with a Nepean Knights Ontario Fall Field Lacrosse-champion squad in 2018, and getting to see his son play for Gloucester against his nephew’s Orangeville team in Nepean’s lacrosse tournament.
Rampley loves seeing kids who are new to sport develop a passion for it. He has revelled in seeing sport’s power to build connections and character; through his work with the Eastern Ontario zone, he found that spirit was particularly prevalent in Indigenous communities such as Kahnawake and Akwesasne.
“I think sport is this great way to teach us life lessons,” highlights Rampley, who finds the same is true in sport administration.
“If you’re on a board, how do you work together? How do you come to a consensus? How do you move together and deal with disagreement?” he adds. “Seeing some of those ups and downs helped me learn and grow too.”
Rampley didn’t know much about lacrosse when his family first got involved in Vancouver, but he saw a great need for volunteers in the sport and stepped up. He started as an assistant coach and later became head coach, while also adding a house league director role to his portfolio with Gloucester Lacrosse. He then became the Gloucester association’s president for three years, followed by a term as the head of the regional zone.
Rampley laughs as he recalls that he may have initially underestimated the reality that his volunteer role would sometimes require the same kind of hours as a full-time job. But he has nonetheless continued his involvement as scheduler for the zone and Gloucester, plus as past president with both executives, not to mention coaching basketball at Lisgar Collegiate Institute and the Shooting Stars.
With increased work commitments, Rampley plans to move on from his role as scheduler for Gloucester next season – once he helps show the ropes to the next leader – but he anticipates that he’ll remain involved in sport in the future, perhaps at the provincial or national level.
“Greg, your dedication, leadership, and countless volunteer hours have shaped the GLA into the strong community it is today,” Gloucester Lacrosse wrote in a recent post on its website. “From all of us — thank you for everything you’ve done.”
The OSC Community Sport Hero features aim to highlight the selfless contributions of dedicated staff, volunteers and sport organizations in Ottawa. Do you know someone dedicated to sport in Ottawa? Help us continue to tell the stories of community sport in Ottawa and nominate a person or organization doing great work in the sport community!