Don Steen was an outstanding athlete at Burnaby South Senior Secondary, even helping the senior boys team with a provincial basketball title 1953. But it wasn’t the hoop hardwood where he thrived as a coach. It was outside on cinder or rubber tracks and their infields where he had a lifetime of success.
Steen decided to be a decathlete winning the 1956 national championship qualifying him for the Olympics in Melbourne, Australia that year. But, as it turned out, Canada didn’t have enough funds to send him and many other athletes Down Under.
After coaching at Burnaby South for nine years and founding the Burnaby Striders Track and Field Club in 1958 at the age of 23, Steen became Simon Fraser University’s first track and field coach. He was a founding member and president of the Canadian Track and Field Coaches Association. Steen was on Canada’s coaching staff at the 1972 Olympics in Munich and was there when terrorists stormed the dorms killing 11 athletes.
In 1978, Steen was named executive director BC School Sports.
Steen went on to coach Canada at several Olympics including 1988 in Seoul where his son Dave won a bronze medal in the decathlon.
Eventually Steen, who even played on Canada’s national rugby team in the 1960s and led the committee that built the Burnaby Lake Rugby Clubhouse, turned his attention to coaching Paralympic athletes. He was the national athletics coach responsible for Canada’s elite blind and visually impaired athletes, coaching them at four Paralympic Games and many national and international events.
But it wasn’t just elite athletes he trained. Every spring Steen helped coach the field athletes at Burnaby Central, including Curtis Moss who went on to compete in javelin at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Steen passed away in July 2022. He was 87.
THE FOLLOWING IS A STORY WRITTEN FOR THE BURNABY NEWSLEADER IN 2008 BY GRANT GRANGER
Photo: Mario Bartel
Burnaby track and field coaching legend Don Steen’s connection with the Olympics and Paralympics goes way back.
Although he was the tournament’s top scorer when Burnaby South won the provincial high school basketball championships in 1953 and he played rugby for Canada, Don decided a decathlete is what he wanted to be. He won the national championship in 1956 qualifying for the Melbourne Olympics, but Canada’s funds were so short he and a bunch of other athletes stayed home.
After nine years coaching at South and then getting the gig as SFU track and field coach, Don was named to Canada’s coaching staff for the 1972 Olympics in Munich. One night the Canadian contingent wanted to watch Canada play Russia in the Summit Series. They pushed some picnic benches up against the athletes village fence and jumped over to view the game at the Olympic communications centre. Shortly after they returned all hell broke loose as Palestinian terrorists took over the Israeli dorms eventually killing 11 athletes.
“They were right behind us,” says Don of the terrorists climbing over the same fence.
With only the Japanese dorm between Canada’s and Israel’s, Don went to check it out the next day. He got close enough to one machine-gun toting terrorist he could have easily held a conversation with him.
Seoul in 1988 was much more joyful. That’s when he went to the Olympics as a proud papa. Son Dave won a bronze beating out two-time gold medallist Daley Thompson of Britain. The two East Germans who finished ahead of him were juiced up according to medical records that surfaced years later. When Don and Dave met in the stands afterward tears streamed down both of their faces.
Eventually Don took up the challenge of coaching blind athletes taking his fascination with biomechanics to a new level. He tells them to listen to themselves and asks them what they hear to help them change their technique.
“It’s a real challenge as to how to put across your points,” says Don, who like his son is a member of both the B.C. and Burnaby sports halls of fame.
Steen continued coaching well into his 70s. One of his star pupils was another Burnaby Sports Hall of Fame athlete, paralympian cross-country skier Courtney Knight. But he also continued to help out in his hometown helping to train field athletes at Burnaby Central. Olympics, Paralympics or high school, it doesn’t matter because coaching keeps Don smiling.