The COVID-19 pandemic has had a detrimental effect on the programs that Warman’s recreation department organizes for youth in the community, but they were able to adapt and provide some programing over the Easter break.
The programming looked a lot different compared to previous years, but they were still able to have sport clinics for the youth which they have done during past Easter breaks.
All of the clinics, which included basketball, tennis, fencing and lacrosse were held at the Legends Centre from April 5 to 8.
The pandemic has limited a lot of recreation activities but Coralie Bueckert, the recreation and community events supervisor for Warman, still wanted to organize activities for youth to do on their Easter break.
“It’s very important for us to give the kids something to do in whatever fashion and whatever regulations we have to do them in,” she said.
The respective sport clinics were conducted within the current COVID-19 guidelines, resulting in only a maximum of eight participants for each respective sport session.
Each sport consisted of two separate hour-long sessions, for kids ages 6 to 10 and 11-and-up, during each day of the respective camps.
The basketball camp was two days, while the tennis, fencing, and lacrosse clinics were three days.
For each sport clinic, there was an instructor from a respective organization that not only was qualified to teach the activity, but was familiar with the sports and activities guidelines that needed to be followed while showing the youth different skills.
“It was so important for us to reach out to (respective) sporting organizations, to get people who had already done those kinds of lessons and plans, instead of just grabbing a dad off the street who might not understand the eight people (limit) and the certain skills (that can be done) and stuff like that,” said Bueckert.
In the past, when Warman Recreation & Community Services would organize a sport program over the Easter break, Bueckert said it would just be a one day event where they had multiple sports for kids to try out, but this year they had to adapt to adhere to current public health orders and offer those sports in a clinic format.
“Because kids can only hold there attention for so long, we thought well lets do it for multiple days,” she said.
According to Bueckert, most of the spots for each respective clinic was filled and after talking to some of the youth, she said that they enjoyed it.
“They were all excited about it, and said they had learned something, which is also important; not just to be active but to learn something new.
Despite not actually playing a scrimmage of the respective sports and having to follow certain guidelines, the clinics were still a success.
“They still had to wear their masks and sanitize and things like that … but kids seem to be interested in it. We’re excited that we were able to offer it and kids were interested in it,” said Bueckert.
Also, as part of the Easter break programming there was a cookie decorating event. Cookie decorating kits were supplied by Refuge coffee shop in Warman.
