The recently-extended COVID-19 restrictions have left many adults looking for different avenues to be active this winter, but for some competitive youth athletes training is still on despite no competitions being allowed.
Raz Peel, director of the Squamish chapter of the Alpine Club of Canada (ACC) said that it is not so much that there is an increased eagerness among the community in Squamish to be active, but that “there are limited avenues to express that eagerness.”
Peel said that he has seen a lot more people who are running and cycling for the first time this year and that more people are planning to explore cross-country skiing and snowshoeing.
However, many people may not know how or where to start a new activity such as cross-country skiing, and that is where ACC volunteers can help.
For that, Peel said that they “still have a very strong community. Virtually, there is still a wealth of support online and people can give you the guidance you need to be able to do the things you want to do.”
Peel also said that there has been an increase in people wanting to take mountain climbing courses with the ACC. However, he suggests, on a personal and club level, that people put those urges on hold until things are safer in regards to the pandemic.
However, for the youth who are still allowed to participate and are already involved in climbing, their training continues.
Judith Hirsch, the competitive youth climbing team coach at Ground Up Climbing Centre, has said COVID-19 has affected competitive climbing “in a huge way [in] that we couldn’t have any local, regionals, provincials, [or] national events.”
Right now, all competition is on hold.
Hirsch said, “in order for us to move the kids through that, and also to keep them all motivated, we try to organize a little bit more in-house competitions within just our team with social distancing.”
Each group is kept to a maximum of six kids who work with one coach, with three groups total.
“That really motivates kids so that they still have that similar excitement on the day or the day before looking forward to it and not knowing what’s to come,” said Hirsch.
The gym had to shut down when the new COVID-19 restrictions were introduced a few weeks ago, but since then the gym has been able to reopen.
“What we tried from the beginning on, and what’s paying off now, is that we made it clear that we have to [social distance], even though at the beginning maybe it wasn’t a mandatory thing,” said Hirsch.
It is also possible for the kids to continue to train because they close the gym off to others so that there is no one sharing the space with them, said Hirsch.
Hirsch said that the kids are “thankful for that and they are always very sad when things are shut down because they love to come to the gym.”
