(REVISED: Aug. 28, 2023)
Christopher Haddad was appointed head coach of the McGill University men's baseball team in August, 2023. A former varsity athlete, the 33-year-old native of Pierrefonds, Que., was both a catcher and outfielder for McGill from 2009 to 2012 and helped lead the team to a Canadian Intercollegiate Baseball Association championship in 2010.
He received coaching certification from Baseball Quebec in 2017 and has served the past six years as a coaching instructor and technical director with Baseball Pierrefonds.
A bilingual product of John Abbott College, Haddad enrolled at McGill in 2009 and graduated with a bachelor of arts (2014), majoring in psychology, with a minor in education. He earned a master's degree in human kinetics and recreation from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 2021. His academic research was focussed on leadership in relation to athlete performance.
In 2021, Haddad was the founder of Optiform, a company designed to help athletes succeed through mental and physical skills training. He has previously served as a special education technician with the Lester B. Pearson School Board (2020-21), a substitute teacher at Herzliah High School (2014-2022), a recreational activities technician at Dawson College (2018-19) and a tutor with the Oxford Learning Centre (2014-2019).
Haddad is the fifth bench boss in team history, behind Johnny Elias (1994 to 1995), Ernie D'Alessandro (1996 to 2011), Jason Starr (2012 to 2017) and Casey Auerbach (2018-2022).
