Stu himself, ideally coaching rather than posed. If the club has an older photograph from his years on the sideline, that is the one — this page is about a span of time.
Stu Nixon
The coach who built the programme.
Stu Nixon coached Oak Park football for most of the programme’s life and is the reason a great deal of it exists. He started coaching in 1987, was an assistant on the 2002 provincial championship team, and then ran the programme for more than two decades before retiring in 2022.
He played for the University of Manitoba Bisons, taught for thirty-five years — the last twenty of them at Oak Park — and served as a Pembina Trails School Division trustee for Ward 1. He was inducted into the Manitoba Football Hall of Fame in 2023. He died in May 2025.
The record is four provincial championships as varsity head coach and a junior varsity title in 2017, with finals in 2004, 2009, 2011 and 2020. He was quick to hand the credit to a coaching staff that stayed — Ryan Soroka, Dave Black and Chris Ollson among them — and Chris Ollson, a former player, has the programme now.
His own school division described what he built as a factory for producing professional football talent, which is an unusual thing to be able to say about a high school and a fair one. Three Oak Park graduates played in the same Grey Cup. Brady Oliveira called him a father figure, and that was the ordinary note in what his players said afterwards rather than the exceptional one.
“Being inducted into the Manitoba Football Hall of Fame is not something I ever considered might happen.”
NEEDS THE CLUB: a few sentences in the club’s own voice about what Stu meant to it. Everything above is on the public record; what is missing is the part only people who were here can write. This page carries his name and so does the scholarship fund.
The Stu Nixon Scholarship
A fund in his name, for players going on from Oak Park.
About the scholarship