A career in sports seemed natural for life-long athlete and sports enthusiast Nick Wilson.
A career in sports seemed natural for life-long athlete and sports enthusiast Nick Wilson.
He grew up in Quebec City spending much of his time in the mountains ski racing, and what began as a recreational activity would prove to set the tone for the next two decades of his life.
“We took on skiing as sort of a family sport and I just immediately had a huge love for it,” he said. “One thing sort of led to another and I got more competitive and started spending a bunch of time in Europe and competing on a more and more competitive level.”
Wilson won the national ski series called the Pontiac Cup, competed for the World Cup and ultimately competed in the 1984 Winter Olympics, where he placed 16th in the slalom.
His “wonky” ski knee forced him to put competing on hold and transition into a coaching role — something he feels came naturally. That transition ultimately put him at the helm of Alpine Canada, the governing body of alpine ski sports in Canada, as chief operating officer.
He held this position and coached Canada's national team until the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.
“I really enjoyed it, loved every moment of it and had tons of diverse and unique experiences,” he said. “I was still relatively young but thinking that I can't stand out here on cold mountains all my life and I've got all these other aspirations, so I thought I would move on.”
Immediately following the Olympics, he was looking for a change of pace.
Changing gears
Following his departure from alpine skiing, Wilson decided to switch from snow to ice.
He joined the Edmonton Oilers as a player development model consultant in 2002 and has held the position ever since.
“My responsibility is helping provide core business skills and strategies to systematic approach to player development,” he said. “It's what you do after a player is drafted; how do you turn them into everything they can be.”
Early into his Oilers career, Wilson took charge of the Heritage Classic — an iconic outdoor hockey game pinning the Oilers against the Montreal Canadiens at Commonwealth Stadium.
“It's now become the NHL's centrepiece product in what they call the Winter Classic, but it's fundamental to the league's marketing and so to have had a hand in that, the creation of it, being a huge success and continuing to be a huge success, is great,” he said.
As a member of the Oilers staff, Wilson also had the chance to work with up-and-coming hockey stars on the Edmonton Oil Kings.
He worked as vice president of business operations for the organization from 2006 to 2010.
“It's really cool to look back now at the role I had, even in creating the logo and wordmark and the whole of it. It's nice to look back at it now because they're just getting good,” he said.
Analytics
Hockey is more than just a sport for Wilson. There is a scientific aspect to it as well.
He leads the Oilers analytics working group, which is a group of roughly 10 “Oilers-friendly” individuals who explore the use of data in hockey performance results.
He said with the mass amount of data that exists around hockey teams and players, an analytics team is responsible for picking out the meaningful pieces that can be used to benefit the team and improve its overall game.
Putting together this working group is something Wilson said comes naturally for him.
“One of my strengths is the ability to bring groups together,” he said.
He does a similar working group for the University of Alberta's faculty of extension, where a group of analytics professionals, business people, professors, municipal government representatives and not-for-profit groups meet to determine what programming the university should offer in analytics.
Despite his long list of accomplishments, Wilson says the most important thing, hands down, is family.
Family man
In late 2010, the Wilson family of six packed their bags and walked away from their cozy life in St. Albert for a six-month adventure in Cuenca, Ecuador.
The idea behind the trip was for Wilson and his wife, Kendra, to show their four children what life was like outside the St. Albert “bubble.”
Jobs were put on hold and the kids took a six-month break from their traditional schooling. Instead, the family would spend their time volunteering with different organizations, exploring their surroundings, interacting with locals and being home schooled.
“We went about it thinking it was once in a lifetime,” he said. “The results were above and beyond what we could have hoped for.”
He said the family loves to travel, although they have an appetite for challenge and adventure compared to all-inclusive-type trips.
“We will continue to do trips, but more the normal kind of nature of them,” he said.
Bright future
Returning home from the six-month adventure, the family had to re-adjust to life in Canada.
Upon arriving home, Wilson started up a new enterprise: the Sport of Business.
This was started upon realizing his skill set was relatively uncommon in high-performance sports combined with his experience in core business skills and their orientation, he said.
“The Sport of Business is intended really to leverage both of those things, one against the other, so the corporate culture can benefit from the learnings that high-performance sport can provide,” he said.
Wilson has a handful of clients, but said he is most dedicated to St. Albert Sports City.
“St. Albert Sports City really caught my eye when we got back from our trip,” he said. “I love St. Albert and I had in my mind the idea of it's a cool city where sport really ought to be part of the culture as people grow here.”
With a group of like-minded individuals, St. Albert Sports City was born.
The concept is to build a community within a community that is focused on health and wellness. It will be located on the west side of Ray Gibbon Drive and where the land will be divided evenly among residential, commercial and light industrial development.
“In the commercial, in the middle, will be a bunch of sport facilities and programming and health and wellness, so a new kind of philosophy on how to live a better life,” he said. “People can move into a community that's not just another North Ridge, but has got a whole bunch more dimension to it.”
The development passed level one of city council approval for zoning and is now subject to an area structure plan to be submitted in the next few months. Wilson said development could start as early as next spring.
Nick Wilson
If you could go back and change one thing in your life, what would it be?
“The one thing I'd change is I'd buy more reliable motor vehicles. Actually no, I'm happy with everything.”
When you die, what would you like to see written on your headstone?
“Wow.”
Away from work, what do you enjoy doing?
“I like doing things with my kids and family, mostly sports. I like golf, I like learning, I like travel — not travel like most people; not all-inclusive Mexico. I like adventure travel.”
If you were a tree/animal, what kind of tree/animal would you be?
“I would be a pine tree. Pine trees are pretty solid and reliable and wintery. Yeah, I'd be a pine tree.”
Why did you choose to live in St. Albert?
“It immediately struck us as a family-friendly community and at the time we moved here, we had really young kids so we were really focused on their needs over the next decades.”
What artist/song are you most embarrassed to have in your collection?
“Danza Kuduro. It's something from Ecuador, but it's an emerging trend here. It's kind of poppy and will emerge as a hit here and it will probably be a bit embarrassing.”
