Discussion: Not specializing too early

I was at public school at the same time as Wayne Gretzky and I remember him being active in sports in general - baseball, cross-country and at least one other sport.

I don’t think the Canadian predominantly school based system of competition and coaching is as efficient as the Norwegian club based system. My club in Bergen was a multi sport club thst made it easy to try different sports (actually it was named a gymnastics club). The community sports club house is also a great model for an active lifestyle as it becomes a social hub based around fitness (but not like a fitness gym here).

But Norway has many more advantages and tools than Canada for developing an active and healthy lifestyle and elite athletes than are mentioned in the article. More holidays and a greater overall enjoyment of the outdoors as a starting point. I guess Sweden has that too so maybe Norway has more inhalers per capita too (or at least that’s what Sudden would say). ;-)

But yes not specializing early is important and that’s where O in Canada could try to be that 3rd or 4th sport for kids. Imagine ARK as a program in all nordic ski clubs. The summer equivalent of jackrabbits. A win win win.

Georgian Nordic, I think, has the potential to be more similar to the Scandi model since the ‘club’ has a multi sports/activity focus. Maybe not multi sport focus yet since nordic skiing is the dominant focus still but having a clubhouse and limited other sports facilities in the town (even trails are limited) the club/activity centre is more a hub for an outdoor lifestyle with cycling, running, paddling, etc. Hopefully soon ARK and AR/adventure running too.

Jack Sassville tweeted about this today.

“ How about funding “amateur”sport at the same level through lotteries. $400 mil is 3x what is done here. Take the societal emphasis away from pro team sports”

Agreed about the school versus club and that would be awesome if Georgian would go in that direction. Trying to think of examples, Rocky Mountain Racers in Canmore right have been ski and bike?

Bash: Gretzky always talks about how much he loved baseball and how important that was to his athletic development, his son played minor ball for a while.

Chris mentioned that in Alaska all the ski programs have joined up to one system, possibly run by Kikkan Randall. So kids can go from XC to downhill to freestyle easily growing up.

Gretzky wanted to be a pro baseball player but things turned out OK for him anyway.

I love the idea of amateur multisport programs and clubs. The emphasis on team sports in school phys ed drove me away from sport for years.

It should be said that clubs in Scandinavia get a lot, or at least a fair bit, of support from municipalities, it varies. Even during Covid has clubs been compensated financially because events had to be cancelled. That money has come from the government though and not the municipalities.

I'd like to see corporate Canada do a much better job of supporting the community, don't think it should only be the government leading. But the clubs will probably have to initiate the relationship and they are good at teaching classic technique, often not the other stuff.

well, that's another thing that also comes with so many people being or have been member of a club. someone in a business will have a link to a club and the connection is there.

Sudden, isn't the amount of govt support in Sweden well down from where it was in the 80s - 90s?

Well, probably true. But what isn't down since the good ol' 80s (2500 at Småland's district champs and 8000 attending Tuna Ting a Sunday in May...:) The crisis in the early 90s definitely tightened things up and sports funding may still be on the rebound. A quick look says that the support has almost doubled though the last 15 years but I don't know what the numbers were in the 80s and 90s.