Doug Warkentin usually has to plug his nose while he’s volunteering. It’s not that the 14-year veteran consultant at Investors Group Inc. in Winnipeg finds volunteer work distasteful; but, as the assistant coach of the Manitoba Special Olympics’ swim team, he is frequently in and under the water demonstrating the finer points of the front crawl or the breaststroke.

He has worked with the swim club for 10 years and only recently scaled back from his duties as head coach because of work and family commitments.

“Life has been really good to me,” says Warkentin, 36. (He and his wife, Tracy, are the parents of an eight-year-old son, Bradley.) “Volunteerism is part of what makes Winnipeg go round. It’s one thing I can do to give back to the community and make a difference.”

Warkentin has one of his clients to thank for getting him involved with the Special Olympics. When visiting the client, Warkentin noticed a drawing on an office wall of a couple of kids with Down syndrome running through a finish line, grinning from ear to ear.

“I asked him if he knew anybody in the Special Olympics and he said, ‘Actually, I’m a coach. Would you be interested in helping coach the swim team?’ A little later, I was the head coach,” Warkentin says.

The coaching staff makes sure their athletes do their best in the pool and look their best out of it, paying for team uniforms out of their own pockets. “A track outfit makes them feel like they belong to a team,” says Warkentin. “It’s huge. When we walk into a swim meet, we have a presence. We have all the same colours. It gives them a sense of pride.”

The average age of his “kids” is around 40, and Warkentin has seen many of them go through life-changing events, such as the loss of a parent. Two of the athletes coached by Warkentin are married to each other and have an 11-year-old daughter, who does not have Down syndrome.

“[The daughter will] take them on the bus and tell them how to read things properly. It’s very similar to I am Sam,” he says, referring to the award-winning 2001 movie in which Sean Penn plays an intellectually disabled man who wins custody of his seven-year-old daughter.

Probably the most difficult experience in Warkentin’s coaching career was the death of one his athletes during an operation. Formerly unresponsive, the athlete had made extraordinary strides in the pool. At the same time, his interaction with others also improved.

“He made a huge impact on my life,” Warkentin says. “We broke through his shell and he became my favourite person there. It was unbelievable how responsive he became.

“His sister told us that, at first, he hated coming to swimming. But then he started really looking forward to seeing us,” he says.

Warkentin also recently started working with the Winnipeg Humane Society. He serves on its capital campaign, which has already raised $10 million of its current $11-million goal to fund a new facility, which is scheduled to open in the summer of 2007.

This volunteer job, too, was suggested to him by a client, but it is a natural fit for Warkentin and his wife, who are are both animal lovers and dote on their five-year-old Shih Tzu, Molly.

Warkentin makes sure that volunteer work is part of his weekly routine: he estimates that he spends between four and five hours a week on it. Although his wife goes out with her friends every Wednesday night, he eschews similar outings with the boys.

“My night out is Special Olympics at the Sherbrooke Pool,” he says, adding that he actively recruits others to donate their time as well. (For more information, see www.specialolympics.mb.ca.)

“All of the other swim team coaches are my friends whom I’ve brought on board,” Warkentin says with pride. IE