Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

Youth Sports & COVID-19

YOUTH SPORTS & COVID-19: Missed opportunities

Mar 9, 2022 | 4:13 PM

KAMLOOPS — Tuesday (Mar. 8), in the first part of a series on youth sports and COVID–19, CFJC Today examined how many young athletes missed up to a full year of competition in their chosen sports. In the second part, we look at some of the other opportunities these athletes may have missed out on as a result of the pandemic.

For athletes — especially young ones, like the girls on the U13 rep hockey team — the pandemic years have probably passed a little slower.

“Some of the girls here, they didn’t score a goal since 2019,” Emmerson Brown explains.

In 2020-2021, you could have counted the number of games this team played on one hand and had a couple of fingers left over. So the bar for a better season was set pretty low.

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“We had our home tournament cancelled, too. Which sucked,” Brown says. “But we got to play tournaments earlier in the year, which was fun.”

Image Credit: CFJC Today

This team will have another chance to show off their game in front of hometown fans, as they’re set to host the BC Hockey Provincial Championships from March 24 to 27. However, it’s another tournament they missed out on that leaves a little sting.

“This year we had to miss WickFest, which was kind of a bummer because that was going be a really cool tournament,” Ari Kinaschuk says.

“That was a bummer because girls typically get [fewer] tournaments than boys, most of the time,” according to Alli Plowe.

“We also missed out on training with Hayley Wickenheiser, which would have been really cool,” Kaia Fletcher says. “We could have learned a lot from her.”

The Canadian Tire Wickenheiser World Female Hockey Festival — aka WickFest — was scheduled to take place in Surrey from February 3 to 6, 2022. The event was postponed, in part, due to the rise in cases of COVID-19 at that time.

“These girls shoot for different targets for the boys — WickFest, the Olympics — those are things these girls have a chance to do,” Mike Brown, head coach of the U13 team explains. “They look up to those ladies. Hayley Wickenheiser is what every little girl wants to be. Having a chance to go to that — we played in it once, they loved it, they wanted to go back. Things just didn’t work out.”

It’s not only hockey players who’ve missed out on opportunities to compete and grow. Special Olympics basketball has been back on the court since the fall. However…

“We missed a season and a half,” Les Andreykew, head coach for the Special Olympics Kamloops basketball program. “We’re lucky that they changed the rules and regulations last fall, and we were able to get back to sport at a normal time of year — we start at the end of September, early-October.”

Ensuring everyone’s safety when they come to practice has been a top priority for organizers.

“We all have to be double-vaccinated to play,” Ty Flukinger explains. “When we get to the basketball gym, we all have to come in one door and when we leave we have to exit the other door. When the team is on the benches, we all have to wear a mask. It’s been tough, but other than that, we’re all in good spirits.”

Image Credit: CFJC Today

The 2020 Special Olympics Basketball tournament at NorKam was one of the last events CFJC Sports covered before the onset of the COVID–19 pandemic. Due to restrictions around travel and competition, these athletes have missed out on a wide array of opportunities in their sport.

“Tournaments, games,” Josh Trudell tells CFJC Today. “I actually missed out on what would have been my third Winter Games in 2020, so a couple of years ago. But yeah, just miss all the games, tournaments, playing with friends.”

Registration is down this season for the basketball program, by more than one-third.

“We only have 22 athletes this year, whereas the last time we had a full season we had 34 athletes signed up,” Andreykew says. “There’s a lot of athletes — whether through the choice of their parents or caregivers — are just not involved in anything right now, as far as group activities go, just because of the COVID situation.”

In 2023, Kamloops is set to host the BC Special Winter Olympics. Basketball is a summer sport, so many of these athletes will be suiting up in that event in a different discipline.

As for the U13 girl’s rep hockey team, there’s still one more event on the calendar that’s been circled for quite some time.

“I’m really glad we get to provincials, still. Which is coming up. I’m really excited for that,” Kinaschuk says.

“It’s going to be really fun,” Plowe says. “It’ll be good to see some tougher competition than what we have this year.”

“For provincials, it’s going be amazing to play some other teams that have better skill level than some of the teams we’ve been playing,” Gwen Storry says. “It’ll be good to challenge how good we can play.”

“It’s nice to sleep in your own bed and then be ready to play in the morning,” Emmerson Brown says.