Kamloops Skating Club – Skate Canada
I enjoy volunteering with youth sports and through my children’s figure skating club. I have given thousands of hours of my time to the club and Skate Canada. I have found it to be a very rewarding experience. I have held nearly every position within our executive, but mainly the role of President. During my tenure we went through policy changes, restructuring of programs, strategic planning, budgetary planning, advertising decisions, human resources endeavors and writing grant proposals for upgrading of equipment. I liken being a President to a similar job as being the Principal of a small elementary school (200-300 students/skaters). You build relationships with parents, skaters and families through emails and meetings; it is a very large organizational task that requires a real desire to see the students succeed. During my time as President we grew the club from 80 skaters to 300 skaters. I am currently the Treasurer of the Kamloops Skating Club (KSC) executive; I stepped into the role because it went unfilled in our last Annual General Meeting and because it was needed. Going into my second year of the teaching program, I am hoping to find another person to fill this role while I deepen my groove in the world of teaching.
Brocklehurst Community Association (BCA)
I really enjoyed my time working on the Brock Community Association’s executive. It was my first experience being a director and getting to be a part of something where we were creating and forming new sturctures to operate within. I was a part of the very first executive, and during that time we put on a large community safety meeting in partnership with the RCMP and City of Kamloops. We went to many meetings surrounding the pool closures, as well as, facilitated a community petition to keep the Brocklehurst outdoor pool which garnered over three thousand signatures from the Brock area. It was a wonderful learning experience, but I found I was really passionate about youth sports and building relationships with families.
Special Olympics BC
February 2nd-4th of 2023 I was the local organizing manager/site manager for the BC Winter Games Special Olympics in Figure Skating. It was such a
rewarding experience; I am so glad I was able to be a part of it. It was more challenging to plan than a traditional competition because so many of the processes used by Special Olympics are different from the main stream of figure skating events done through Skate Canada.; this was coupled with more stakeholder groups that had input. It was a great networking experience and I learned more about the planning and implementation processes of different operations of large scale multi-sport events. My job was to plan and implement the event right from the schedule, to the music organization, to the volunteer shifts on the ground. It required a lot of planning and implementation, similar to the planning side of teaching does. I would definitely do it again!