NORTHUMBERLAND –
They came, they saw and, with luck, the 2014 Ontario ParaSport Games site review committee conquered any reservations they might have had about Northumberland County hosting the Games.
Despite Friday’s snowstorm, the site review team saw every venue listed in the proposal, local Games bid committee chair Paul Macklin said.
Three other municipalities are vying to host the Games.
Friday’s tour ended at East Northumberland Secondary School in Brighton around 3 p.m. and Macklin said he was pleased with the way the tour went, although because of the blowing snow, some venues were only seen from the outside.
In addition to viewing the seven locations across Northumberland that would host ParaSport events (ranging from sledge hockey to lawn bowling and wheelchair tennis), the review committee had already received a bid package that included a book outlining the “elements for the successful operation” of the games, plus an interactive map.
“With a simple click, (the map) allows the viewer to see the venues and related sports for the Games,” states the letter from Macklin and Northumberland Sports Council chair Gordon Ley to Erin Hamilton, Ontario Games Consultant of Sports Alliance Ontario.
A high-energy video was also part of the official bid by Northumberland and it featured local para-athlete Isaac Bouckley.
Seen standing in Port Hope’s Jack Burger Sports Complex and then swimming in its six-lane pool, Bouckley explains how he was born with a club foot, subsequently undergoing operations. The pool went from being an area for therapy for him to a high-calibre training area for his chosen sport. In the video, the young athlete explains how fortunate he, and others, are to have such a fine facility in the county.
The video also introduced the review team to the other six county locations that would host events, including the Town Park Recreational Centre in Port Hope, the Cobourg Community Centre, St. Mary Secondary School in Cobourg, the Keeler Centre in Colborne, the $1-million state-of-the-art new track being completed at the East Northumberland Secondary School and the Brighton Lawn Bowling and Croquet Club. It notes that “the pond” in the CCC was specifically designed for sledge hockey, where a crowd of 3,000 spectators can see the competition.
The bid package reinforces “our community’s strong commitment to hosting the event, ‘raising the bar’ even higher, to take the parasport movement and awareness of disability issues to an unprecedented level,” states the accompanying bid letter.
The bid package highlights the benefits of holding the 2014 Games in Northumberland, ranging from its central location and proximity to Toronto to the county’s experience in hosting more than 150 major sporting events in the past, including the Highland Games for the past 50 years, and identifying about 70 others.
“Northumberland is known as a place were ambitious projects are realized,” the bid package states. “This is because of the unbelievable capacity of our volunteers, and the belief that when there is a collective commitment, the community is 100% dedicated to success.”
It also cites some of the high-level athletes the area has produced and its organizational layout for mounting the Games which includes working with the boards of education “to include a number of demonstration sports events involving some of the higher profile sports… (which) will be complemented by an adaptive sport philosophy to facilitate (the public’s) better understanding of sport and persons with disabilities.”
Once awarded the bid, the committee would create a pre-marketing campaign that would be responsible for the foregoing initiatives, the bid package states.
Just the bid has created excitement in the county; award of the Games would grow that.
valerie.macdonald@sunmedia.ca
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