If you mentioned Doug Staveley’s name to anybody in Richmond, BC, odds are it won’t take too long before somebody recognizes it. Staveley has had an incredible reach in the community of Richmond, particularly in the education field, as he has coached for over 40 years including at four secondary schools – Steveston High, Cambie Secondary, Hugh Boyd, and Steveston-London.
As a student at Lord Byng Secondary School in Vancouver, he was a five-sport athlete playing football, rugby, basketball, baseball, and cricket. After high school, he focused on playing football and rugby at the University of British Columbia. In Richmond, however, he would simply be “the coach.”
He would first serve as the assistant coach of the senior boys football team at Steveston High School from 1969 to 1996 (during which time he also coached their senior boys and senior girls basketball teams). He also spent some time as the football league convenor in Vancouver & District during the 1970s. From 1985 to 1988, Staveley would be an active CFL official all the time while teaching.
Staveley would re-emerge in the coaching scene in the mid-1990s when he went to Cambie Secondary to coach basketball. During that same time, he was also part of the BC Secondary Schools Football Association’s executive (1992 to 1995) as well as serving as president of the association in 1995.
He would return to the football sidelines as a coach in 2002 when he took on the role of assistant coach with Hugh Boyd Secondary’s boys teams until 2008. He also coached in Surrey from 2012 to 2016.
Staveley was inducted into the Richmond Sports Wall of Fame in 2018. In 2020, he was honoured by the BC Lions with an Orange Helmet Pioneer Award.
