{"id":1977,"date":"2017-01-12T21:06:26","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T02:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newwestschools.ca\/archive_241212\/?p=1977"},"modified":"2018-03-13T23:31:03","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T03:31:03","slug":"football-saved-my-life-student-nolan-belleroses-story-goes-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newwestschools.ca\/archive_241212\/football-saved-my-life-student-nolan-belleroses-story-goes-national\/","title":{"rendered":"“Football saved my life” – Student Nolan Bellerose’s story goes national"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hyacksplayerstop-1\"Grade 12 student Nolan Bellerose<\/strong>\u00a0shared his story on the national CBC radio program\u00a0The Current<\/a>\u00a0this week, highlighting how football was the turning point that saved him from addictions, gangs, and depression.<\/p>\n

Today, Nolan is a 225-pound offensive lineman with the New Westminster Hyacks Senior football team, and a student in the Sigma program at NWSS.<\/p>\n

But growing up, he was headed down a dangerous road after his mother Alissa died when he was three and his father walked out shortly after, never to return.<\/p>\n

“My childhood was really kind of rough and shaky because I was growing up with alcohol and drugs a lot with a couple of my uncles,” Bellerose said on CBC’s The Current<\/em>. He suffered from depression, anger and pain until he got the chance three years ago to play football.<\/p>\n

Hyacks head coach Farhan Lalji recognized in Bellerose that “here was a kid who had lost everyone that was close to him.” \u00a0As highlighted in\u00a0The Province<\/a>\u00a0newspaper, Bellerose found in football the discipline and tangible life skills that helped turn his life around. He’s seen similar changes in the lives of other players on the team, too.<\/p>\n

“If I was still going down that path without football I wouldn’t be here right now. I would probably either be dead or in jail right now. I believe that 100 per cent.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Bellerose is graduating high school in 2017. Last year, he volunteered \u00a0with \u00a0the Spirit of the Children Society<\/a> in New Westminster, which empowers and strengthens Aboriginal families. The experience as a mentor to children needing guidance is also helping set him on a new path. He plans to head to college with the goal of becoming a social worker, “so I can try to motivate youth around Canada to play sports they want to do and see that it can change their lives too.”<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grade 12 student Nolan Bellerose\u00a0shared his story on the national CBC radio program\u00a0The Current\u00a0this week, highlighting how football was the turning point that saved him from addictions, gangs, and depression. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-school-news","category-featured-news","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newwestschools.ca\/archive_241212\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newwestschools.ca\/archive_241212\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newwestschools.ca\/archive_241212\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newwestschools.ca\/archive_241212\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newwestschools.ca\/archive_241212\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1977"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/newwestschools.ca\/archive_241212\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2025,"href":"https:\/\/newwestschools.ca\/archive_241212\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977\/revisions\/2025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newwestschools.ca\/archive_241212\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newwestschools.ca\/archive_241212\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newwestschools.ca\/archive_241212\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newwestschools.ca\/archive_241212\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}