A group of dedicated minor sport volunteers have banded together to share ideas on how to improve the athletic development of youth in Innisfail.
Engaging youth and creating a fun, active, and positive experience in sport will be a few of the goals of the resurrected Innisfail Sport Advisory Group.
After its formation in May of 2009, the group was forced to take a hiatus but was brought back to life in November.
Representatives from all minor sport associations or teams are welcome and encouraged to attend the quarterly meetings and engage in the discussion about sport development.
One of the other main goals of the group is to initiate discussion between different sport associations about how they can work together to solve problems such as scheduling conflicts or to find ways to increase opportunities for youth in the community.
“One of our goals is to educate parents, coaches, and members about sport development,” said Heather Fletcher, a community facilitator with the Town of Innisfail.
Although the group is not being run by the town the community services department will be helping to facilitate and do some of the organization for the group.
“We have also had a number of groups in town noticing lower enrollment numbers,” said Fletcher.
“We want to try and create a database to track enrollment between sports to see if kids are just moving sports or if they are dropping out.”
To try and kick off the engagement process the Sport Advisory Group invited Dr. Stephen Norris from the Canadian Sport for Life (CS4L) to speak to the group about the CS4L movement.
Norris is the director of sport physiology and strategic planning for the Canadian Sport Centre Calgary where he has spent years working with the Winter Olympic sports teams. He was one of the specialists who helped to develop the CS4L document that outlines how to make sport better for youth.
He spoke to the group about how to make youth into overall athletes through participation in a variety of sports instead of pushing them into one sport at a young age.
The goal of the CS4L was to focus on what is in the best interest of the kinds and not the ideas of the parents or coaches who may only be focused on winning.
Norris spoke to the group of sport representatives at the Innisfail Golf Course on April 27, and impressed on them the importance of children leaving sport with a positive attitude that will carry on through life.
The full study done to create the simplified CS4L document is available for free online at www.canadiansportforlife.ca.
Norris explained to the group how the document could be applied to sport in Innisfail through the development of events such as sports days or through the creation of multi-sport camps to expose youth to all kinds of physical activity.
Discussion will continue at the next Sport Advisory Group meeting on Wednesday, June 29 at 7 p.m. in the arena upstairs meeting room.
