The Town of Golden has a new Recreation Services Co-ordinator.
Kim Bryan was hired and will work year round at different facilities in the town. One of the main areas she will work at in the summer will be with the staff at the Golden Swimming Pool and in the winter the main focus will be on programming at the arena.
“I love it. It is a great match for me. I get to apply my educational experience,” she said.
Bryan has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Recreation and Health Education from the University of Victoria. She said the program was very broad and was a great building block for the job with the town.
Starting at the pool has made the adjustment to her new position an easy one for Bryan who was a competitive swimmer for a number of years.
“I have been doing a lot of front line jobs before taking this position. I enjoy interacting with a slew of different people,” she said.
Bryan’s background was one of the factors that made her a great fit for the position according to Town of Golden Manager of Recreational Services, Jordan Petrovics.
“What we did with this position was that we took two existing positions which were part time and seasonal and combined them into one year round job. We did not increase the labour budget for the town,” Petrovics said. “This was a great opportunity to get someone in a year round role. Across the province in small towns finding someone with a good aquatic background to work at a seasonal pool is quite challenging. We are very happy with Kim.”
Petrovics went on to say that having someone hired full-time, year round will open up what can be done in the town while creating consistency at recreational facilities in town.
This challenge of having many different parts of the job is something Bryan is looking forward to.
“Having this job with different areas is something that interests me,” she said.
As for what is coming next, Petrovics felt working with the community is key to moving forward.
“Moving forward with our recreation program one of the goals we have is working with the partnership with existing organizations and working pro-activily with them…we want to be able to create the opportunity for those groups to succeed,” Petrovics said.
Bryan went on to talk about a couple of the many programs which will be offered at the pool.
“We have a great team of lifeguards at the pool who will be running swim lessons for kids or adults. We are also going to try and get youth involved with being lifeguards. Our mentoring programs will be called the lifeguard club for children eight-twelve. They can drop in for $10 and we will have a lifeguard running through fun based drills and games with a focus on lifeguards,” Bryan said.
