‘Sport is my life’: Passion fuelled outgoing executive director Marci Morris for 10+ years with Ottawa Sport Council

By Dan Plouffe

In summer 2017, Marci Morris was coming off a devastating defeat, but she couldn’t have been happier.

Earlier that year, Ottawa’s sports community was dealt a big blow when it lost its bid to the host the next Canada Summer Games, and Morris had been a key leader behind the effort.

Many people would have wanted to get far away from it all, but Morris ran towards it. The daytime executive director of the Ottawa Sport Council revelled in the opportunity to volunteer as a member of Team Ontario’s mission staff for the Winnipeg 2017 Games, and she returned to support young athletes at the next Games too.

“She was such a proud volunteer,” highlights OSC board of directors chair Mathieu Fleury. “She took her vacation time to go and support these athletes because she’s so community-minded and so passionate. It’s pretty awesome.”

Morris announced last month that she’d soon be stepping down as the Sport Council’s executive director. She’s served in that role since the umbrella group was established in 2013 to represent and support local sports organizations.

Fleury recalls how frustrated the Canada Games bid group was to be denied hosting rights in large part because Ottawa didn’t have the right sports facilities available – which the bid leaders couldn’t really impact, he notes – but he also remembers Morris was intent on learning from the experience and ensuring that the loss could help Ottawa’s sports community in the future.

“She’s really lived the ups and downs,” Fleury signals. “And she really sees the potential and the aspirations, as well as some of the shortcomings, of our sport community and of the city overall. And she’s always kept her passion through that.”

Well-known on the Ottawa sports scene, Morris had always been passionate about sport, but it wasn’t initially part of her professional career. That changed when the Queen’s University electrical engineering grad became “very disillusioned” with the high tech industry and decided a change was in order.

While living in Malaysia for her husband’s job, Morris worked with Team Canada sponsors for the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur and “absolutely loved” the experience.

“I think I became an event junkie there,” she smiles.

Morris launched her revised career with the Canadian Paralympic Committee, and has worked with many organizations at the national and local level since then, including the Ottawa Internationals Soccer Club and for True Sport with the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport.

The long-serving Ringette Canada board member got her event fix as Ottawa site general manager for the FIFA U17 Men’s World Cup of soccer in 2007 and later joined the Ottawa-Carleton Ultimate Association as its executive director for over four years.

It was with OCUA that she first identified the need for the Ottawa Sport Council, further reinforced by her experiences as a trainer and volunteer in ringette, soccer and rowing as her kids progressed through the youth sports ranks.

“I saw how volunteers just gave all their time to these community sport organizations, which enhanced the lives of the participants so much, and yet they weren’t getting any support,” Morris recounts. “I was always thinking, ‘how could we make that sector better?’ It just seemed to me that, to a certain extent, it’s a forgotten sector.

“Community sport is mostly run by volunteers and they’re struggling to meet all the challenges that they have to meet and still provide a wonderful experience for their participants. In my mind, they’re the unsung heroes.

“It gave so much to my children and my family, and I saw what it did for community, and how it built community. That was always my motivation.”

The Ottawa Sport Council was established with the ethos “We believe there should only be positive experiences in sport.”

While it’s the moments on the field of play that are usually most treasured, Morris is part of a rather rare breed that enjoys the behind-the-scenes work that goes into making it all possible. When her day includes working on a funding application, she wakes up excited.

“I actually love writing grants. I think it’s my engineering brain,” explains Morris. “Grants are very structured and they’re very methodical. One thing has to lead to another, and they’re very analytical, and that’s the way my brain works.”

She adds that her Type A personality has also been valuable in her role. Clear and honest communication are Morris trademarks – local sports organizations will tell you that after meeting with Marci, you left with no doubt about where you stood. She wouldn’t sugarcoat reality, but that always came with a larger dose of supportiveness and friendliness, and there was always a focus on the path forward.

Fleury salutes Morris for fuelling “really impactful” projects such as concussion education, safe sport and the Belonging Playbook, and more globally, she helped connect a local sports community that often operated in silos.

“As a chair of the board, for me to have a person like Marci – who’s passionate, who’s dedicated, who’s very skilled – I mean, you can’t ask for better,” Fleury underlines. “Obviously, we’re sad to have her leave, but at the same time, we understand the length of the tenure and appreciate that she’ll be here through the transition until we find the next ED.”

Fleury adds that the Ottawa Sport Council has become a “national leader” for community sport thanks to the tools and resources it has helped create.

That’s both a source of pride and frustration for Morris.

“Our sport system in Canada is fractured,” she outlines. “What happens at the national level is for national-level athletes. What happens at the provincial level is for provincial-level athletes, and the little local athletes and community sport organizations are left to fend for themselves.

“Oftentimes, so much gets pushed down upon that sector that has so many volunteers, and we’re expecting so much of these volunteers, and yet we aren’t providing them with the resources, either financial or otherwise, to make sure that they’re doing a good job and to help them do a good job.”

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Morris says that what impressed her most during her time at OSC was the community’s work through the pandemic.

“The sector came together during COVID,” she recalls. “They wanted to create the roadmap. They wanted to support each other. Everybody put their own sport aside to make sure that sport as a whole got to return, and that, to me, was the best collaboration.”

Morris is also especially proud of the Ottawa Sport Council Foundation and its grant program to aid local sports organizations in implementing initiatives to increase accessibility and inclusivity. The Belonging Playbook, which helps guide groups on how to foster greater equity, diversity and inclusion, is another big highlight.

“Sport can give so much to so many people, but only if it’s available to everybody,” Morris notes. “That’s a real honour to be able to allow those people, who already do such a great job, to expand their offerings in ways that they want to, and support them in that journey.”

Read More: Freshly-released ‘Belonging Playbook’ helps sports groups create ‘an inclusive and accessible place for everybody’

Morris’s first plans outside of her ongoing Sport Council duties run in a similar vein – she’ll be volunteering for the Shoebox Project, which provides holiday gifts to women facing homelessness.

Morris came to the decision to step back from her executive director role not long after her father-in-law’s funeral fell on the same day as the birth of her first grandchild in August.

“It kind of made me realize the circle of life, and that there’s a lot of other things that I would like to do,” reflects Morris, who’s considering possibly going back to school. “And I think the Sport Council’s in a really good place right now. I just thought it’s time for me to spread my wings, and it’s time for other people to inject their ideas, because I think organizations can always use new ideas and new life.”

Another realization came when Morris and her husband had planned to go hiking in Italy in September, but her knee gave out and she couldn’t do it, a year after she’d injured the other knee.

With more time to focus on physiotherapy and stretching, she’s set herself the goal of cycling up to Champlain Lookout in Gatineau Park next year and completing a 25 km trail run or hike.

“Sport is my life,” Morris highlights. “I just want to get back to being able to do all the hiking and trekking that we do.”

She’s still busy preparing for the upcoming Ottawa Sport Summit – the 10th edition – which will be held on Nov. 30 at the RA Centre. Morris will stay on to get the next executive director rolling – she’s not sure how long that may be, but perhaps the end of January.

“I’ve often said that I’m the jack-of-all-trades and master of absolutely none. But I have a lot of information about many, many things that are important, and that transition is going to be very important to make sure that the new executive director is able to hit the ground running,” she says. “I am very committed to doing that because this organization means so much to me, and I want it to be as successful as possible.”