‘New guy’ works his way to the top

It was a little over a decade ago when Evan Andrew was the “new guy” sitting at a small desk on the fifth floor of the Sport Manitoba building after landing a role with the 2017 Canada Games Host Society.

“I didn’t really know anyone at Sport Manitoba at all. I was out there, plugging away in one of those cubicles and people would be like ‘Hey, who are you?’” said Andrew with a laugh in a sit-down interview with the Free Press on Thursday.

“I would say they took a bit of a chance on me, for sure. I was the director of marketing and sponsorship for the Canada Games, and I hadn’t necessarily managed a bunch of people so I think they took a chance, but in the end, it was a very successful Canada Games and the areas I oversaw, we achieved, or even overachieved, in some of those areas around revenue generation.”

With the Games in the rear-view mirror, Andrew was hired as Sport Manitoba’s new director of marketing. He worked his way up to become director of business operations before recently earning the ultimate promotion: Sport Manitoba president and CEO.

His predecessor, Janet McMahon, recently retired after five years at the helm.

Andrew’s hiring was announced publicly early Wednesday.

“It still seems a little bit like a dream,” said Andrew.

“I’m very proud to be in this position, and I think I have worked hard in my career to get opportunities for advancement. I definitely still probably have a little bit of imposter syndrome. Sometimes I’m like ‘Is this real? Am I the right person for this?’ But it’s gratifying to know that other people believe in me enough to give me this opportunity.”

Andrew grew up in Morden and initially aspired to become a sports journalist. He attended Ryerson University — now Toronto Metropolitan University — where he earned a degree in radio and television arts while also playing on the school’s hockey team for a year as a walk-on. It was around that time when he got his professional start at Rogers Sportsnet when it first launched.

“I was a broadcast associate which basically meant that you got assigned to watch a couple of games, and they said ‘Your pack is gonna be 30 or 45 seconds’ so you pick out five or six highlights, and you write a little script, and then someone like Jamie Campbell might actually read what you wrote during Sportsnet Central,” said Andrew.

“It was like ‘I can’t believe they’re paying me to watch sports.’ I’d be doing this without them paying me.”

After returning to his home province in 2009, he worked at the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce in special events before moving on to Winnipeg Economic Development & Tourism as a sports and special events sales manager.

“Almost the first day that I started, I came into this building (in 2013) and they started working on the 2017 Canada Games bid,” he said.

“So I was around that table with the bid committee really quickly and we were successful with that bid.”

Now in charge of the building, he knows the amateur sports scene faces challenges such as a lack of funding, volunteers and facilities — things that are not unique to Manitoba. But Andrew, who has three boys with his wife, Kathy, isn’t planning a major overhaul by any stretch.

“There’s so many good people in our organization that care about their work a ton. And you know, we’re non-profit… The fact that there’s so many people that have been here for a long time, it speaks to the culture that has been built over years and years and years — and the passion that they have for delivering sport and helping sport in our province,” he said.

“I don’t want it to be like ‘Oh, Evan is now this person in the corner office on the top of the building’ when I’d much rather just be a member of the team. Yeah, I have a leadership position, but I know that it takes a team to make things happen.”

For Andrew, the role is less about leading Manitoba’s amateur sport system and more about supporting the organizations that power it.

“The provincial sports organizations are really the ones that deliver sports in our province… They do all the heavy lifting, and there are so many great executive directors and fantastic presidents and board members that work their butts off to make their sports happen.

“And Sport Manitoba’s job is to support them and help them grow their sports in a safe and inclusive way. That would be our focus.”

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