JASTER’S JABBERINGS — Recreation master plan causing concerns for racquetball’s future

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/04/2019 (2348 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The City of Brandon had an open house for its recreation and community facilities master plan last week, and for the most part it looked pretty good.

A new outdoor pool with waterslides similar to what’s in Souris would be fantastic to replace the current outdated outdoor facilities. A covered ice shed would do a lot to add another much-needed sheet of hockey ice in the city during the winter as Westoba Place, Kinsmen Arena, Enns Brothers Arena and the Sportsplex rinks are booked solid, resulting in some teams booking ice times out of town to practice.

The new proposed outdoor field complex looks good as well. It has 10 soccer fields and one cricket pitch, although some of the soccer fields can be used for cricket as well. The design should ensure it won’t flood at the proposed location of Veterans Way and First Street.

This complex is desperately needed since Optimist Park was abandoned after annual floods and, even though Brandon Youth Soccer Association is bringing parts of it back, there is concern that it isn’t viable long term. The cricket community is also growing and needs a place to play so this is ideal for them as well.

However, there is a concern about the plan to revitalize the Sportsplex. Most of it makes perfect sense. The plan included renovating the change rooms and taking over the ones under the stands in the hockey portion of the facility so that there are family dressing rooms for the swimming pool. The proposal includes expanding the building north to add new change rooms for the hockey arena.

However, part of the plan also includes expanding the main entryway and possibly changing the racquetball courts into multipurpose facilities that would allow expanded programming and classes to be offered there. If that were to happen, it could cause severe damage to the racquetball community.

Currently, there are three racquetball courts and they are used almost on a daily basis. The Brandon Racquetball Association has junior programming two days a week, leagues run on three other days and there’s an also open day during the week.

Brandon Racquetball Association president Laureen Madill said there are 16 players in the junior program and it’s hard to gauge the number of people who use the court as not all players join the association, but they are used quite a bit. If the number of courts, which each measure 20 feet by 40 feet, is decreased to two or one, it would cause some issues for the club.

“It would definitely make tournaments more difficult to run, especially larger-scale tournaments like we have had in the past,” Madill said. “It makes it tougher because you run into a lot of time constraints then.

“Junior lessons with one court would be pretty darn tough. With two courts it would probably still be doable. One would make things pretty tough to run programming.”

If it becomes difficult to run junior programming and the club is unable to hold tournaments, like the provincial championships it hosted two weeks ago or its annual Grumpy Gary’s Racquetball Extravaganza event, then what are the odds that the club and sport will survive in Brandon? It seems like it’s asking a lot to try to bring in younger players and asking them to travel to compete and expect them to stay in the sport.

The basis of the argument for possibly converting the courts into multipurpose rooms does make sense. The courts take up a lot of space and aren’t being used a lot, especially during the daytime hours. The size of them also limits what can be taught in those spaces and the floor has to be maintained so that it’s not damaged for the racquetball players if other classes are being offered in there.

Racquetball may not have a large membership, but the local club has produced some impressive results. Kurtis Cullen was regularly pushing for a national men’s championship for quite a few years and Alex Murray went to the world junior racquetball championships in 2014. Meanwhile, Leyton Gouldie and Reid Sorotsky are heading to junior nationals in a few weeks as the Manitoba champions.

According to Jeff Elliott, the Sportsplex’s facility manager, the purpose of the master plan is to generate conversation and no plans are set for the future of the courts. More parties will be brought to the table if plans are presented to get rid of the courts.

If that’s the case, then the city may want to look a building a field house as part of this master plan before finalizing its decisions. There were multiple post-it notes from the open house saying one is needed, and it’s hard to disagree.

Track and field is growing in the community and has no proper facilities to practise in when snow is on the ground. Other sports organizations like soccer, rugby and football are looking for indoor places to practise and play during the winter as well. The artificial turf in the Keystone Centre’s City Square isn’t enough.

The current plan wants to make the Sportsplex a crown jewel of the city, but why not look at building something new that could serve multiple needs for the community better and become the new crown jewel? That could potentially solve multiple problems as the racquetball courts could be saved in the Sportsplex because a new field house could host a lot of the programs that could take place in the multi-purpose rooms. Or they could be included in the field house.

Right now, a field house is a pipe dream, but with all this planning being done, maybe it’s time for the city to look at whether it would be worthwhile to build one and whether it would be sustainable.

Just a few other notes:

• Congratulations to Faith Clearsky of the Crocus Plainsmen. Clearsky competed in Basketball Manitoba’s graduating all-star game on the weekend and was named player of the game for her team.

• Huge shoutout to Neelin’s Don Thomson on winning Basketball Manitoba’s Mike Spack Award for his contributions to the growth and development of the sport in Manitoba. There isn’t much Thomson hasn’t done to grow the sport — in fact his Mini Spartans program runs this week —and he is a very worthy recipient of the honour.

• The International Ice Hockey Federation has given itself a black eye. On Sunday in the world women’s hockey championship final in Finland, the Finns appeared to have scored the game-winning goal in overtime, but video review waved it off due to incidental contact with the American goalie, who was out of the crease and given a penalty on the play for tripping. IIHF refused to give an explanation until the day after the final and it has left a lot of people shaking their head.

What makes this story worse is Finland winning would have been fantastic for women’s hockey as it would have been the first time Canada or the United States did not claim the title. It’s a real shame what happened on Sunday.

• Now that Tiger Woods has finally won a major, does that mean that there will be less focus on him for the rest of the season or will it grow even more? It is cool how his win bridged generations of golf fans.