STMC Athletics Update #1 – September 28, 2020
School athletics is a big part of our community and identity at STMC, and there is an abundance of research that supports that participation in school sport aids in the development of critical life skills, improves students’ mental well-being, enhances academic achievement, and leads to healthier habits in adulthood.
While athletics will not have a normal look this year we think it’s vitally important to provide creative opportunities for our students to take part in extracurricular activities. From an athletics end we will be enhancing our intramural program to provide weekly opportunities for the students to compete in different activities within our new house system. We will be starting with soccer on October 7th.
Currently BC School Sports is in Stage 2 of its Return to School Sport Plan (Intra-School activities within educational cohorts). This means that co-curricular activities such as school sport may take place but under the conditions specified by the Ministry in the plan. Specifically, that reduced physical contact training and friendly competition may take place within the educational cohorts students are placed in by their school for the delivery of the curriculum. Recently the plan was updated to allow shared equipment and participation between educational cohorts as long as strict physical distancing measures are in place. Click on the link to see the full version of the recently updated BCSS Return to School Sport Plan. In particular, see pages 10-11 of the BC School Sports Return to School Sport Plan (link above) for more stage 2 specifics, and pages 12-13 for common questions and answers. It is important to note this is different from club/community sport as published by Via Sport in August as they are in phase 3. As we continue to get updates from BC School Sports, we will send out subsequent updates so that everyone is fully aware of what’s happening with STMC athletics.
Our Fall sport programs include football, girls volleyball, cross country, and swimming. While our teams cannot practice or compete as normal, we are striving to find creative ways for the teams to train.
If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me at james.borthistle@stmc.bc.ca.
