Badgers Sports Management is proposing to create a Cranbrook Sports and Recreation Council.
On Wednesday sports and recreation groups came together for the inaugural meeting to talk and share ideas of how to go forward.
“Staying in a silo doesn’t help anybody, so if we can collaborate as a number of user groups it helps us be efficient, it helps us keep costs low, helps more kids and adults have more access to our recreation and sports,” said Russ Sheppard, director, Badger Sports Management.
The overall goal of the council will come organically Sheppard said, and something that will need to be developed.
“At minimum to collaborate as user groups on what’s happening would be a big step, but this can go a long way in developing some of our sports tourism industry and etcetera,” he said.
Sheppard noted there will be many benefits to having these organizations all come together to collaborate, including information sharing as a major aspect.
“Sports management right now is very complex, you have to deal with parents, you have to deal with insurance, you have to deal with kids and the facilities. At a minimum having a broad swath of people like this is going to allow us to be more efficient in our user groups, and of course most user groups are volunteer-based with very little training,” he said.
The idea to get a council together has been on the minds of many of the people.
“We realized we were all in silos, so Michelle (Kleindienst) did a great job of bringing us together. We need to break those silos down,” said Sheppard.
At the meeting, there was a diverse group of organizations that came together to discuss a sports and recreation council. Organizations who were there include dance, baseball, soccer, volleyball and more.
“A very diverse group of professionals, private industry, public industry, the city. I was really taken aback, you have hundreds and hundreds of years of sports experience in this room and some best practices. I think diversity is going to be our strength,” said Sheppard.
Now that the inaugural meeting is done a group of 14 people has been put together to develop a non-profit and draft a mission statement. They are hoping to hold another meeting in February.
For more information on the council, they can contact badgerssports@gmail.com or contact Kleindienst at michelle.kleindienst@bdc.ca.
