Saturday, February 4, 2017

Big pieces of an even bigger puzzle: #TRUEPlay, Changing the Game Project and Sport for Life's National Summit

In the last couple of weeks I've been lucky enough to take part in many initiatives that should change the landscape of how sports and physical activity is done for our children. I've already written about The current state of sports and physed in Ottawa. These last few weeks participating in True Sport's TRUEPlay pilot project, John O'Sullivan's Changing the Game Project and Sport for Life's National Summit have only cemented what I already think about sports and physed in 2017.

I'll present my thoughts and experiences in chronological order.

A few weeks ago, I was invited by True Sport at a round table discussion about their TRUEPlay Multisport initiative. The TRUEPLay Multisport pilot project ''is a nine-month pilot project targeting children in Grades 1 and 2. The children will participate in a variety of sports learning new skills while developing their physical and ethical literacy skills.''




Personally, I think something like this was missing in Ottawa. It already exists in Cochrane. I talked to Grace Dafoe via Twitter who is the Multisport Program Coordinator of the Cochrane Multisport project. I hope such projects stay forever. My daughter, when she's old enough, will for sure be participating in such a project. I don't believe in early specialization. I even wrote a blog post with a list of multisport athletes. As a society, we should be giving as many opportunities as possible for our children to try a variety of structured and unstructured activities.

Being invited to the True Sport round table meant that I was also invited to hear John O'Sullivan speak about his Changing the Game Project. If you don't know who he is, check him out by watching this video:





I absolutely agreed with everything he said. That doesn't happen often because I have strong opinions about developing young athletes and children. ''The mission of the Changing the Game Project is to ensure that we return youth sports to our children''. I find that there are many adults who interfere too much. Just ask your children what they did during recess. They'll say that we played soccer or we played tag. Playing is a big piece of the development puzzle. As adults, let's get out of the way of children playing sports. Of course we need adults but let's never forget that the game is about children having fun. 


Next up in my personal and professional development month: Sport for Life's National Summit. I presented my school's sport and physical activity program.  I'm really proud of what we do at my school. We do so many things to develop young and healthy children such as our Bike Across Canada Program, True Sport Intramurals, Yoga in the hallway, outdoor classroom, ski club, and sports teams. My school believes in helping our students lead healthy and active lives.




During the summit, I also got to meet Kim St-Pierre and she talked to me about Boks Canada. ''BOKS is a FREE program aimed to enhance academic performance and the overall health of kids through physical activity.'' I can't wait to start using this program to promote physical activity in my school.

The last initiative that I took part in was a Healthy School Advisory during the summit. Vicki Harber from S4L got a bunch of leaders talking which is great. We don't get a chance to talk with other leaders from other schools and organizations.

Through these initiatives, I was able to meet many leaders who share the same vision as I do. A vision where we let children play the games and sports they love for the right reasons. Sports and physical activity for children have to be more than winning, losing, trophies and banners. Children understand that and once all adults do, our society will be healthier.