Expansion breeds attention at the Family Leisure Centre
T 44 RYAN MCCRACKEN
he Family Leisure Centre has been an important part of Medicine Hat’s local sports scene since opening in 1999, and by June 2016 it will be attracting a whole new range of attention with a two-tiered expansion aimed at accommodating a wealth of the city’s user groups.
The expansion began in 2013 with the introduction of a natural turf field at the Methanex Bowl, which allowed for the Medicine Hat College to host the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association women’s soccer national championships in November 2014. The Methanex Bowl expansion will be completed this spring with the addition of more bleachers for spectators and a new press box.
“(Natural turf) is more safe than turf, especially in the winter months and fall months when it starts to freeze outside. You can play on it virtually 24 hours a day, seven days a week and you don’t ever have to let it rest,” said Grant MacKay, project lead for the Family Leisure Centre expansion. “Through that we’ve been able to not only accommodate football, which was always played up there, but now soccer and rugby have a place to call home as well.”
Phase Two of the expansion focuses specifically on the Family Leisure Centre building and proposes a number of changes to be fully implemented by June 2016. The building, which currently holds an aquatic centre and an Olympic-sized hockey rink, will grow to include a number of new amenities such as expanded spectator seating in the competitive swimming pool, and a double gymnasium for basketball, volleyball, badminton and pickle ball. An indoor track facility will sit above the gymnasium and will include a 200-metre track and roughly 15,000 square feet of fitness space. The expansion also includes
2015 REPORT ON SOUTHEAST ALBERTA
a field house, which will host a twin-boarded multi-purpose field for sports like soccer, tennis, lacrosse and bocce ball.
“We’re still soliciting input on the fit out of the sport spaces. The actual design and the construction of the building is now underway. We know what we’re building, but exactly how we’re going to fit it out — so the exact turf type and the exact track material — are all being discussed and vetted right now,” said MacKay. “We did get some feedback ... the city has committed throughout this entire project to solicit feedback and we’ve been very fortunate to get good participation from many of the user groups and we’re using that information to help us make better choices that are more conducive to their long-term use.”
One of those user groups is the Bulldogs Track and Field Club, which hopes to make regular use of the indoor track facility. Bulldogs president Sean Freeman says having a central base at the Family Leisure Centre would help the organization gain some competitive momentum in Alberta.
“The potential for things like being able to host a meet, or just training a sort of level compared to what we’re dealing with in terms of our competition. We’re definitely behind in terms of a facility and we’ve done well to make due, but it would be nice to be on sort of a level playing field with everyb dyody else,” said Freeman, adding the Bulldogs currently train out of the South Ridge YMCA and Notre Dame Academy. “In the last eight years we’ve worked out of school hallways and gymnasiums. We’ve been out of three or four different places just to put four days of work in.”
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The building currently hosts the South East Athletic Club’s four Tigers AAA hockey teams at its Olympic- sized hockey rink, and SEAC president Aaron Burghardt says the having the Family Leisure Centre to call home
“It helps us to centralize all three programs that we facilitate. It’s helped us to build a more united culture between each team so we can just focus on athletes getting to know the athletes on the other teams. Coaches are able to interact with each other and share knowledge and help each other out. We’re also able to centralize our equipment storage,” said Burghardt. “It’s trying to create one united program instead of three different ones, that’s the big thing ... You get a little bit of pride in that building
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for them. It’s a little bit of a home for the year.”
“This is as close to the WHL as they’ll get. The way they treat us here … These guys treat us top notch here, it’s a great staff and a great facility,” added SEAC Midget 15 Tigers head coach Mike Welford. “The staff here, and of course the facility, it’s second to none. What they do here for us you don’t get anywhere else.”
MacKay added the expansion will also create for expanded capacity amongst different user groups at a number of Medicine Hat’s sporting facilities, such as the Cypress Centre Field House, which primarily hosts soccer while juggling field time with tennis and baseball.
“Baseball and tennis would both love to get their hands on more field time but they can’t because soccer is consuming a great deal of the usable space,” said MacKay. “By creating a different facility that maybe soccer can make more use of, there may be some capacity injected into the old field house at the Stampede grounds to now allow some of those other users to get a bit more access to field time that they couldn’t before.” ■
Alan Joy’s Memorial Fund Society, operating as AJ’s Loan Cupboard is a charitable society that loans out various types of medical equipment, free of charge to those in need.
If you need it and we’ve got it, you can use it. 403-580-5580
www.ajsloancupboard.ca
41188873•03/31/15
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