Sports head Zarins is out

As the winter sports close their season, another Concordia sports regular is taking a final bow.
Director of Sports and Recreation Harry Zarins will be retiring March 15th.
The news came as a surprise while Zarins was in Regina watching the women’s hockey team play at the national championship tournament a couple of weeks ago.
Zarins says he had been considering leaving for a few months, but kept it to himself and didn’t come to a final decision until two weeks ago.
“When I considered where I wanted to be going and where I wanted to be a few years from now, I figured the best way to do it is to look at other plans and move on from there,” he says.
Zarins, 51, headed Concordia sports for nine years.
Before that a brief two years in Victoria, and over a dozen years involved in sports administration at McGill, his alma mater.
Zarins graduated from McGill with master and bachelor’s degrees in education, while also coaching swimming and playing water polo. Zarins was also one of the first graduates of the Diploma of Institutional Administration at Concordia 25 years ago.
Apart from director of sports, Zarins teaches sports administration at Concordia, and would like to stay on working for the Quebec football conference in the CIS.
Zarins believes his major accomplishment at Concordia was “getting our present facilities up to snuff, things were neglected. I’ve always kept facility projects in the forefront.”
But Zarins says he would have liked to have seen more concentration on the sports facilities from the school.
He notes although new turf will be put on the football field this season, most other Concordia sports facilities at both campuses are still wanting.
He says funding is a critical component.
Zarins isn’t sure where he’ll be going from here.
He’s toying around with an idea for a private business, but would also like to work in some other capacity at the school, or do fund raising.
Zarins would like to stay in Montreal, but is keeping his options open.
He says his most treasured memories of Concordia will be the people he worked with, and the first CIAU women’s hockey national champion, which Concordia won in 1998.