Q: I am worried about the hockey program we have set up for our little community. The kids are not signing up for it like they used to. We almost had to scrap one of the younger teams because not enough children registered for hockey. I am on the recreation board and I have always been proud of the program we have developed for our young children, but something is going wrong. They do not seem to be interested. I am worried that the kids will not participate in anything and sit around either doing nothing or getting themselves into trouble.
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A: I suspect that this is a problem shared by many communities throughout our country. Hockey was at one time a passion in the West, but of late it appears to have lost some of its flavour.
Part of the problem is that young people have more options than they once had. Not that long ago the standard formula for a community’s recreation program was hockey in the winter and baseball in the summer. In today’s world, you would struggle to find a community without a gymnasium in which the kids are able to participate in other activities, and you would not likely find too many schools without some extra-curricular programs to occupy students once the daily classes are over. Some of the young people who once were playing hockey are doing other things.
If communities are going to have relevant programs, recreation boards need to break from the standard hockey and baseball formula and start talking to their young people to find out what else they are interested in doing.
Many young people are not able to easily identify what they want to do. Walking down the street and asking kids what they want or even getting them to fill in questionnaires is not going to provide the information you need to build successful programs. To get that information, you need to get to know the kids and let them get to know you.
Successful recreation boards also invite young people to their meetings, encourage younger people to sit on committees, let everyone know their suggestions are important, and ask the kids to pick up a few hammers and nails and contribute.
The more that kids are able to be a part of the solution, the less they will be a part of the problem, and the less you will have to worry about kids doing nothing.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan who has taught social work at two universities. Mail correspondence in care of Western Producer, Box 2500, Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 2C4 or e-mail jandrews@producer.com.
