Island Olympians Matthew Sharpe and Cyrus Gray stood on the newly resurfaced turf field at the Pacific Institute for Sports Excellence while thousands of kids around them tried their hands at a variety of sports on Saturday.
“Facilities like PISE really mean a lot,” said Gray, who is part of the national bobsled team.
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympian from Duncan has done much of his dryland training at PISE with the downhill portion conducted in Calgary.
“These young kids see you and feel inspired,” added Gray. “National teamers can be that motivation for little kids.”
Sharpe, who competed in the triathlon last summer in the Tokyo Olympics, concurred: “PISE helped me become a better athlete, for sure. And the facilities are available to the public, so you get that community connection, such as today, and that’s great because it means top athletes don’t have to operate in silos.”
Following a blessing from the Lekwungen Dancers, Saanich South MLA and sa国际传媒 cabinet minister Lana Popham officially opened the resurfaced field during the PISE Family Sport and Recreation Festival. She noted the 2,000 children who took part in the previous event in 2019 —pre-pandemic — and added: “We will blow past those numbers today.”
And indeed they did, with close to 3,000 kids taking part Saturday. “There’s been a lot of pent-up demand over the two years of the pandemic and people are now re-engaging,” said PISE CEO Robert Bettauer.
The resurfacing of the field, which includes a shock-pad system to help alleviate concussions, cost $1 million and was funded to that amount by the provincial government. With the additional installation of new LED floodlighting, the entire project cost $1.2-million.
Surrounding the field is the existing running track used by the public and middle-distance runners in the Athletics sa国际传媒 western training hub. The latter, several of whom competed last summer in the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, are training for this summer’s world track and field championships in Eugene, Oregon, and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England, with the eventual goal of Paris 2024.
“We have Olympians and Paralympians training at PISE, outdoors and indoors, day-in and day-out,” said Bettauer, adding that PISE takes a playground-to-podium approach.
“The key to elite sport is to get as many kids as possible involved in sports. That’s what this day is all about. These are the kids, some of whom, will eventually go on to make our national teams. Others will take away physical-literacy skills they can use a lifetime. Involvement serves all purposes”
