BC Grassroots Rugby Summer Blog - Week 4
BC Grassroots Rugby has finished their fourth week of Summer 2021!
As many of our supporters and readers know, BC Grassroots Rugby hosts annual summer camps. However, for those of you who are new to the BC Grassroots Rugby family, BC GRF is a community development non-profit organization working to provide opportunities for youth of all backgrounds to participate in safe, organized sport during the summer. The summer camp program transpires from July 5th to August 29th, with a range of days for each camp. The camps are set up in different areas all over Vancouver island. Therefore, the children of each region are met in an area that is both accessible and familiar to them.
WEEK 4 EVENTS
With the long weekend and British Colombia day just beyond the trees, week 4 was full of hard working, more community changing events and most importantly, lots of fun! Week 4 was particularly challenging due to the smoke from the forest fires, but the teams affected, successfully worked around it!
SUPERVISORS HIGHLIGHTS OF WEEK 4
Nanaimo/Ladysmith
On Friday the 23rd we had a camp on Denman island with six kids. It was awesome to get a rugby ball in their hands! We had our first pop and play with the Boys and Girls Club of Beban on Thursday, 22nd, July and twelve kids came out. We are happy to be building a relationship with the boys and girls club. We are also starting a weekly session on Monday’s with the boys and girls club of Fifth steeet at Bayview Elementary. We did not really have a Give-Back-Friday, however, we had a fun day at Barsby water park and on the field with children from Kidz Kompany Daycare. This upcoming week we may clean up the nanaimo hornets rugby club.
Port Alberni
Our week 4 camps were similar to our week 3 camps. I was really proud of the 6 to 8 year olds; they were killing it once again! On Thursday, we had a city camp, to create some more rugby players. Our Give-Back-Friday was really productive as we painted around the rugby club. In particular, the skill level of our 9 to 13 year olds is really picking up!
Cowichan
Week 4 was a busy week for us. We ran our pop up and plays, as well as a camp at the Queen Margaret School. During the week, we had an equipment drive for charity. This consisted of us asking the community to donate unused sports equipment to our team at QMS. We, in turn, donated the equipment to the Cowichan First Nations Tribes. We had an amazing camp at QMS on Thursday July 28th with boys and girls aged 10 to 14. They were a very highly skilled group who took some of the team on, in a high ball competition! A fun event we had was the Cowichan touch rugby event occur on Thursday nights. This is where 35+ people come out and play and have fun!
Kelowna
Although we had some interesting events in Week 4, due to the smoke, we still successfully ran our Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday touch sessions. We also planned some events around the community. For Give-Back-Friday the team took part in a meal service at the Kelowna Gospel mission.
Victoria/ Esquimalt
There were some excited things that happened in week 4. We added a new location to our program. On Thursdays from 2 pm to 4 pm we will be meeting at Westhills park in Langford. Week 4’s session was a great success! As well as Dallas road, between Cambridge and cook, from 4 pm to 5:30 pm on Thursdays, where we raise a lot of awareness for the organization. Week 4 marked one month into our two months of making an impact on as many kids as possible. We have done an outstanding job this past month impacting a record number of kids for this organization! We have just started picking up steam and I am excited to see where we will be after our next four weeks. For Give-Back-Friday our team had a sports equipment drive where we collected balls, hockey sticks, cones, cleats, and jerseys in order to donate them to kids without access to sports equipment. In week 4 we had our first session partnering with the PISE summer camps; we put on a session for three separate groups at this camp. The kids were full of energy and excited to learn a sport that they had never heard of before. They were all a great group and can’t wait to continue this partnership!
WHAT’S COMING UP?
Nanaimo/ Ladysmith - This upcoming week we may clean up the nanaimo hornets rugby club. We will also be starting our partnership with the Nanoose First Nation on Thursday.
Port Alberni - We are going to Bamfield from August 17th to 19th, with final details to come. It’s a great opportunity to get some rugby exposure in some of our remote communities!
Kelowna - This week, we will head indoors for our pop up sessions due to the smoke. We will also be taking part in a food drive for the Central Okanagan food bank.
Esquimalt/ Sooke - There will be a pop-up and play on Friday at Lansdowne from 4 pm to 6 pm. There will also be a pop-up and play on Thursday at Westshore from 5 pm to 7:15 pm.
Cowichan - We have our Cowichan touch event on Thursday nights from 6:30 pm to 8 pm at CRFC. There will also be Kerry Park summer camp session’s from Tuesday to Thursday from 9 am to 12 pm, and on Friday from 10 am to 12 pm.
Victoria - This week we have a very exciting camp on hornby island from Thursday to Sunday where we will be welcoming 15 athletes between the ages of 12 and 17 who will get to participate in a four day (august 6th to 9th) overnight camp on Hornby island where kids will have a chance to hike, camp, BBQs, sing, swim, garden, take part in arts and crafts, and most importantly play rugby! This is an amazing opportunity to get your teenager out and enjoying one of the most beautiful islands in B.C.
For persons staying on Vancouver island, we have our Saturday beach rugby days where we will have a pop up and play at both Willows beach (the grass area) and Cadboro Bay beach on Saturday from 11 am to 2 pm
Week 4 is the mid-point marker of the foundation’s summer camp program. There have been a lot of hard working persons and teams, regarding getting kids out there and exposed to rugby as well as making an environmental and physical change to the surrounding communities. It will be interesting to see more of the change that the teams will bring to Vancouver Island and Kelowna!
