We have a lot of impressive new rec facilities here: the Legacy Sports Park, the new lights at Hendrickson Field, a revamped BMX track, a mini soccer pitch, climbing gyms and more.
I hear about the importance of these facilities in keeping kids active. It’s often one of the first arguments whenever someone needs to raise funds or public support for a project: build a new facility so kids will have something to do instead of playing video games.
Something about the argument, though, doesn’t sit right. For one thing, there has been an explosion of new sports in recent decades, which means a broader choice of activities, each with their own demands when it comes to places to play. This means a lot of volunteers needed to do a lot of work to raise a lot of money for a lot of space. Again, these are worthwhile campaigns, but how much can one community do? And how much should one community do?
I have a problem when the issue is phrased in terms of building a particular facility or else kids will never get off the couch, especially where there are questions about how best to support children’s physical activity.
In a previous newspaper job, I once asked the mayor why the city never built neighbourhood playgrounds anymore. His response was they put all their rec funding into new facilities.
As I learned at my last job doing communications work for an early childhood development network, this is not necessarily a great plan. There is growing research about the need for kids to have unstructured play, which helps encourage creativity. It’s especially important for economically vulnerable kids who might not have great access to organized activities.
Unfortunately, in an age of helicopter parenting and play dates, such unstructured play becomes more rare. Yet, think of those kids who break out Superblades for neighbourhood road hockey games, and you’ll see kids creatively finding their own place to play.
Squamish, you’re really active and healthy compared with most places, so stop and take a breath. Maybe we can stop worrying about every detail of kids’ activities and just make sure they go out to play.
That’s their job, after all.
