September marks a new era for sports in Vankleek Hill as the newly formed non-profit called the Vankleek Hill Sports Club begins its fall programming for the youth of Champlain Township and the surrounding area.
The club’s mandate is to provide affordable recreational youth sports programs while helping to facilitate local school and competitive teams in need of financial or administrative support. Teams playing under the VKHSC banner will be known as the Vankleek Hill Rockets and will include the Vankleek Hill teams playing in the Glengarry Soccer League.
The first initiative will be a program called Phys Ed 101 in which participants will be exposed to numerous sports over the course of three 12-week semesters (fall, winter, and spring). Each semester will be broken down into specific sport units (such as basketball, volleyball, badminton, etc) which will each last 2-5 weeks. The weekly sessions will be held on Tuesday nights at Pleasant Corners Public School (6:00 pm – grades 3 to 5 and 7:30 pm – grades 6 to 8) and will follow the Long Term Player Development (LTPD) models which have become the standard across the country. LTPD stresses appropriate sized playing surfaces, small groups, greater practice to game ratios and grouping players with similar skill sets.
Champlain minor soccer and t-ball will continue to run next summer but will be moving over to the LTPD style of programming. The club also hopes to run one-day tournaments for fringe sports like dodgeball and KanJam.
Financially the club will be funded through memberships, program fees, donations and corporate advertising. Although the club will be geared towards children’s activities, adults wishing to support the VKHSC can do so by purchasing an annual adult membership. Adult members will receive a yearly commemorative t-shirt which will be available exclusively to members as well as a quarterly newsletter which will cover the club’s news, programs, and recent donations.
For more information on the Vankleek Hill Sports Club contact [email protected] and visit our website www.vkhsc.ca or Facebook page www.facebook.com/vkhsc/.
