Monthly Youth Night Friday activities return to sports facility

By John Watson Local Journalism initiative Reporter

Youth Night Friday has officially returned to the Strathmore Motor Product Sports Centre and it has re-launched with a bang.

The program, which is hosted on the first Friday of every month, encourages local youth to drop in and participate in an activity among others relatively their own age, being between seven and 12 years.

“The idea is they’ll get to check out a different area of the facility every time they come and engage in a different activity,” said Sports Centre Manager Marcie Brinton.

“Sometimes we’ll have dodgeball, sometimes we have Nerf wars, capture the flag, it all just kind of depends on the month and what we have going on.”

The program was initially launched prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent facility closures. Brinton added for the first event back, she was more than satisfied with the turnout.

“I am really happy with the attendance, it was really well attended… and we hope that next month we see a lot of kids out as well,” she said.

Speaking to the efforts of getting programming up and running again, she said it hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing but the result is well worth the effort.

“Staffing has kind of been a challenge for us coming out of COVID-19 but we had adequate staffing and kids’ attitudes were absolutely great,” she said. “I think kids were just happy to be back and especially after coming out of COVID-19, being able to participate in drop-in activities again.”

Brinton said many of the kids who show up to the programs don’t necessarily participate in other sports or clubs after school but are still wanting to be involved in an extracurricular activity.

Admittedly, she added, some events are inevitably more popular than others with local youth. 

“We have actually offered (a Nerf war) in the past and it was one of our most well attended, so that was kind of strategic and why we offered this one as our first one back to build that momentum that we would have lost (during) COVID-19,” she added.

Now that the program has relaunched, the intent is to continue into a trend of hosting, COVID-19 and social distancing precautions allowing. 

Those who are interested in the Sports Centre’s activities may find details about upcoming events online via the facility’s website.