LETHBRIDGE -- Organizers of minor sports say the province threw another curveball on the weekend, announcing the easing of some restrictions on Monday, which meant some school and minor sport training can go ahead as part of the first phase of reopening.
The announcement came as a surprise for Starbound Dance Centre artistic director Alita Van Mill, who said there’s been a real lack of communication from provincial health officials.
“We were receiving contradictory information all day and we had families asking us and we were just trying to do the right thing,” she said.
Starbound has been teaching classes online via Zoom since November.
The transition back to in-person instruction isn’t all that simple and additional safety rules, like increased physical distancing during lessons, aren’t easy to implement, especially on such short notice.
“We spent all of Saturday figuring out if we could open or not. So then we were pressed for time to get in and provide proper santization, and meet all the new criteria to re-open,” said Van Mill.
The dance centre was able to get everything in order with proper sanitization and the first class held in-person since November went ahead on Monday afternoon.
Van Mill added that although it’s been a more stressful time reopening than anticipated, the kids and families that go to the studio are ecstatic.
“We’ll jump through a thousand hoops if that’s what we need to have kids back in this building,” said Van Mill.
“Many parents have messaged us videos of the kids who started crying. They didn’t even believe it. They thought they were being lied to. They were so excited.”
Elsewhere in southern Alberta, the short notice and flip-flopping of restrictions had a much greater impact.
Nanton Mayor Jennifer Handley said that the town decided to remove the ice from the Tom Hornecker Recreation Center on Thursday, just two days before the province announced indoor leisure activities like skating and hockey practices could resume.
“They were very clear up until even this Friday when they talked to our town’s CAOs, that [rinks] could not be used until the end of March.” Said Handley.
“So we made the decision; alright, we need to pull the ice because it just doesn’t make sense anymore.”
Handley said it costs the town roughly $1,500 per week to keep the ice surface intact.
“I know there’s no playbook for how to govern during a pandemic and I understand that. But all we ask for is communication and consistency,” said Handley.
“We just ask that they’d consult us before making these massive decisions because we feel left out of the loop, we feel blindsided.”
For kids in the province, it’s definitely exciting to be able to get back to doing what they love, but the yo-yoing of restrictions is also being felt by those responsible to organizing those activities.
