DAGANE
Before being interviewed for this bio, Dagane Dagane has to appease the disappointed kids who want to sit with them during their lunch break at Free Play’s Summer Camp. The junior coach assures them that he’ll be back soon.
It’s a hectic environment, Dagane agrees, but he remains upbeat. “It's fun…” He smiles, “I like it.”
Hectic environments are not new for Dagane, as he describes his home country, Kenya, where he spent the early years of his life, as “chaotic”.
“It's a good country. I like Kenya. But it's crazy,” Dagane says “My family was safe, but we decided to move to Canada.”
A corrupt education system was one reason for Dagane’s family’s move to Edmonton.
“Some kids who are richer, they get a better education. Then if you're poor, you get a worse education, they don't teach you anything.”
Dagane’s family felt that the move was necessary for him and his siblings to get a good education. In Canada, Dagane found not only a new home, but a new favourite sport: hockey.
“I used to hate hockey,” he says, “Then I got into it for Free Play and started playing more. And then, I watched NHL games and that's [what] turned the tide. And now I'm a big hockey player.”
His favourite part of playing hockey? Playing defence. “I like the look on a person's face when I stop their run,” he grins.
Now going into grade nine at Londonderry Junior High school, Dagane not only anchors one of Free Play’s hockey teams, he is also a junior coach with the organization. He helps coach, mentor and lead the kids ages 8-12 alongside senior coaches and he is enthusiastic about giving kids the same opportunities his family moved to Canada for, regardless of the barriers challenging them.
“Everybody's included, like you do give everybody a chance, but sometimes kids feel left out,” Dagane says. “Like sometimes they don’t wanna play sports because a certain someone is there, or they're getting bullied, or they're not getting passed to… or they're getting discriminated against. So I think Free Play does a really good job of taking discrimination out, letting everybody have an equal chance to [play sports and] have fun.
The kids have taken to Dagane just as Dagane has taken to coaching them. His favourite part of the job is helping kids out, even in tough times.
“Sometimes when a kid is sad, they come to you,” Dagane says. “you do your best to cheer them up. And when you actually do cheer them up, like when you get to see that smile on their face, it's a nice feeling.”
“There was this one time we were in the field, we were playing a structured [soccer] game,” he recalls. “And then this one kid, he got hurt badly, so he sat out, he was crying. He was upset that he couldn't play anymore.”
“So I sat with him, we talked, we talked about soccer. And then at the end of the day, he was going to his bus, he turned around, he came to me. He said, thank you for sitting with me today, that really cheered me up. So then that made my day warm and I had a good rest of the day.”
Dagane is looking forward to having a hand in Free Play’s continued mission: Making sure everybody can play. No exceptions.
“It means a lot to me actually helping all these kids participating in Free Play itself. Like I know I'm part of something…. I'm part of an actual movement. I'm helping kids.”
Written by Stefan Salegio
