Amateur Sports
Gaming Grant Review
The Provincial Government has set up forms in various areas of the province to discuss the issues of gaming grants for funding for various groups and/or organizations.
Skip Triplett has travelled the province and listened at various forms or what groups or individuals have told him.
Below is one such recant regarding School Sport in BC. Feel free to visit http://www.communitygaminggrantreview.gov.bc.ca/home/
It was delivered by Sue Keenan.
Good morning.
It is a real privilege for me to be here this morning and this session is very timely with school going back into session yesterday. Of course we have our challenges, as most of you know, with job action currently underway, but that being said it is a privilege.
I want to start my presentation, and it is short, with a tie into what Premier Clark has been talking about for the last year, and that is the importance of families and communities and the health of those families and communities.
I personally believe that sport is a critical tool for building healthy communities and families.
That being said, I would like to provide you with a bit of an overview of what our organization does and what we are responsible for and then get down to the key element, which is the ask, which is what everybody is here for today.
B.C. School Sports is the provincial governing body for inter-school sport in British Columbia. It is a membership driven, autonomous, non-profit society.
The association is a registered charity and liaises with the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Sport, every school district in the province and our key stakeholder groups, which includes all of the PACS, the school superintendents, the school trustees, and of course our principals and athletic directors province-wide.
B.C. School Sports membership, and we are membership based, is now at 455 secondary, junior, and middle schools across the province, both public and private.
These schools are located in every corner of the province. The association provides sport programs and services to over 100,000 student athletes and 13,000 teacher and community coaches assist in delivering the programs.
Our mission statement is to promote student participation in extracurricular activities, assist schools in the development and delivery of their sport programs, and provide governance for inter-school sport competition.
Currently we offer 7,000 teams each year across the province in 18 different sports.
We also have teams that range from the grade 8 level through to the senior level, which is grade 11 and 12.
B.C. School Sports is the umbrella organization responsible for conducting 50 provincial championships in 18 sports.
All championships are at the senior or open level.
Some of these sports, and I won’t list them all, include our big guns, football, basketball, rugby, volleyball, soccer, and some of our smaller sports, snowboarding, alpine skiing, curling, track and field and so on.