With summer winding down and the last of the city’s sports camps held a week ago, organizers at Dawson Creek’s parks and rec department are grinning from ear to ear with the response to the week-long sports sessions.

In 2009, after years when the city offered almost a camp every week of the two-month summer vacation, parks and rec organizers opted to drop to just three camps because of declining enrollment. However, this year organizers decided to offer six camps over the course of the summer and were overjoyed with the response as most camps were filled to or close to capacity.

In some cases the organizers had to turn people away as all the spots were taken. A couple camps had enough registrants to run but were not full, and just one (gymnastics) had to be cancelled because the minimum number of registrants was not met.

At the top of the list in terms of enrolment were the golf, soccer and volleyball camps.

The maximum 15 golfers signed up for a golf camp at Farmington Fairways last week. The organizers had to turn away nine interested golfers as there were no spots available.

The University of Victoria soccer camp, run by former Tomslake resident Tracy David who is the women team’s coach at the university, had the most players ever since the soccer camp started in 2005. Fifty-seven youngsters took part – just three shy of the maximum registration allowed.

The volleyball camp held at South Peace Secondary School, run by a Kamloops player who has experience at the college, university and international levels, was completely full with 36 players enrolled.

Both the volleyball and soccer camps drew players from much farther way than just the Dawson Creek area.
“The big highlight was that we drew people from all over. We had people from Cranbrook participate. We drew people from Calgary, Spirit River and Grande Prairie. The word was out there and people were coming from Chetwynd and Calgary,” explained Tara Mayoros, an organizer at the city’s parks and rec department.

Basketball, which has seen a recent decline in the number of kids playing the game at both the middle and high school levels, had enough participants to run this season after not being offered in 2009 and being cancelled in 2008.

“We had 11 of 15 spots registered, so we were happy with letting it run. The year before last it ended up getting cancelled because we didn’t have the participants.”

Another highlight was the two weeks of mini-sport camps that the city offered. These camps offered pre-school kids (up to six years of age) a chance to try soccer, T-ball, mini-golf and gymnastics in morning or afternoon sessions.

“There is a need. I’m getting feedback, and they really want this. There is a need for those up to six. We encourage people to call in and ask us (about camps)…. We are looking for what the community wants and we will try and implement those types of things,” said Mayoros, adding her thanks to the efforts of summer student Nikki Sander who ran the camp program.