Ooks athletics ready for standout 2025-26 season

Revisiting Wall of Fame, hosting a national event, and competing in new sports

There’s suddenly so much NAIT blue and gold spilling out into the halls around the Ooks athletics offices it’s like the department can’t contain its excitement for the 2025-26 season.

Installed this summer, new colourful floor-to-ceiling banners boldly declare the polytechnic home to some 200 student-athletes and all the fans among the student body. New digital displays tell of the success of current players, contributions of past ones, and other aspects of the ongoing (and more than six-decade) story of the Ooks.

There’s good reason for the show of enthusiasm – this will be a banner year for sports at NAIT. We caught up with athletics and recreation director Jordan Richey to talk about a season that will be marked not just by a showing of colours, but by honouring the past, achieving an athletics first, and hosting one of the biggest events to ever come to campus.

Brand new wall of fame

Having celebrated its 60^th anniversary in 2024, modern Ooks athletics are also the product of the passion and effort of players, coaches and program builders of years gone by. To recognize them, Richey and staff are reviving NAIT’s Wall of Fame, a corner of campus dedicated to sharing those stories and contributions.

“It’s time to kick that off again,” says Richey, who notes the last update to the wall happened in 2007. In each of the next five years, his team aims to name five new inductees. The first group will be announced in December.

A NAIT first: Teams in every sport

The Alberta Colleges Athletics Conference, the league where the Ooks compete throughout the regular season, features 10 sports: badminton, basketball, curling, cross-country running, futsal, hockey, golf, indoor track, soccer and volleyball.

For the first time, NAIT will field teams in each, with the recent addition of indoor track.

“NAIT’s philosophy is all about student experience [and] opportunities,” says Richey. “What better way than to be in every sport?”

National volleyball championships come to campus

Following the unprecedented national win by NAIT’s men’s volleyball team in Victoria in 2023-24, Richey and staff were inspired to bid on hosting the event themselves – and succeeded.

From March 10-14, some 300 student-athletes, coaches, team staff, fans and family members from across the country will gather at NAIT for the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association volleyball championship.

Richey hopes the impacts of the tournament ripple across the polytechnic, creating opportunities for participation by various NAIT programs (Media Communications and Production students, for example, could help with storytelling and content creation), food services, and, of course, students and staff. “That’s the goal, to pack our gym,” says Richey.

Those new hallway banners are meant to help stoke that energy. “Every institution aspires to showcase their [campus], students and programs, and we get the opportunity to do that,” says Richey.

Great reasons to be optimistic

The Ooks don’t measure success solely by championship titles but teams are still keen to see their names hanging on banners in the gym or arena. So far, Richey sees fewer obstacles to that outcome.

“Last year was the youngest year we’ve had for student-athletes,” he says. “Now they’re more mature, more experienced, so they’re naturally going to be, in my mind, better.”

As proof, he points to early successes. NAIT golfers have already qualified for nationals, and signs point to cross-country runners doing the same. Heading into fast-approaching provincial playoffs, the men’s soccer team was tied for first and the women for second at the time of writing.

Overall, says Richey, “We should be strong.” Most importantly, he adds, “it’s going to be fun.”