Lambton College professor Justin Randall had a surprise for students gathering virtually Wednesday for the first class of a new semester.
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Lambton College professor Justin Randall had a surprise for students gathering virtually Wednesday for the first class of a new semester.
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Instead of a home office, Randall set up his laptop on a patio table on his backyard rink in Corunna and wore hockey gear, skates and a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey.
It was a special events management class in the college’s sports and recreation management program and the setting was intended to provide a little inspiration to students who will be planning special events as part of their classwork.
“We do a lot of things to make college fun,” Randall said. “These students have been through so much with COVID. I wanted to try something different. ”
“They were in shock,” Randall said about the students’ reactions when class began with him on skates taking a turn around the rink on camera before sitting down to start teaching.
“I skated in and said, ‘Welcome to special events.’”
Another surprise came when TSN sportscaster Darren Dregar joined the virtual class as a special guest. The class was expected to be featured as part of a national hockey broadcast later in the day.
Randall said he connected with Dregar – a fan of backyard rinks – on social media and invited him to speak with the students.
Randall went to college in the US on a baseball scholarship and then played minor pro ball for five or six years before returning to Sarnia and putting his master’s degree to work.
“It’s my dream job,” he said about teaching in the college program. “A lot of people think we’re a gym class, but we’re far from it.
“It truly is a business program, but it’s related to sports.”
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This is his fourth backyard rink and “by far the biggest” at 26 feet by 60 feet, Randall said.
“I think this is as big as we can go, but we’ll see when next fall comes around.”
The first year he built a rink his oldest son was only two and they ended up spending more time playing on the ice with his toy trucks than skating, but the youngster took a liking to skating in the following years.
“He’s a really good skater,” Randall said. “He’s in hockey in Mooretown.”
Randall’s youngest son, 3, is now skating on his own and the rink has been getting plenty of use during the recent cold snap.
Sarnia City Coun. Bill Dennis tapped into the love of backyard rinks on the weekend when he left a post on his Facebook page inviting local residents to send him photos of their rinks.
Dennis said he plans to put all the names of rink builders that arrive by Friday in a hat and have three selected to receive $ 100 gift cards to local restaurants.
It’s an idea he borrowed from Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, who challenged members of that community to build rinks and submit photos.
“I thought, ‘That seems pretty cool, I’ll do the same thing here,” Dennis said.
“The response has been incredible,” he said. So much so that Dennis had lost count Wednesday of the number of local rink photos he had received by that point.
“Some of these rinks – holy smokes – are they ever creative,” he said. “You can’t get much more Canadian than backyard hockey rinks.”