Track and field athletes might not reach the finish line this spring. They might not even get to the starting blocks.
A vote last week by B.C. teachers means that some school sports seasons have been cancelled and others have been jeopardized.
This Saturday (April 28), Nanaimo's Rotary Bowl stadium is booked for the North Island high school track and field championships. Campbell River Christian, a private school, has agreed to organize the meet. That team will be at the track that morning at 9 o'clock sharp.
"And I'm not exactly sure what other schools will be there," said Bob Saunders, coach of the Dover Bay Secondary School track and field team.
"Everything's changing on a daily basis. We're on a roller coaster right now."
Between April 17-19, members of the B.C. Teachers' Federation voted 73 per cent in favour of a resistance strategy against Bill 22, the provincial government's Education Improvement Act. It's meant a withdrawal of participation in all volunteer activities including extra-curricular sports.
A clear majority of teachers made the decision, but it doesn't necessarily sit well with a clear majority of coaches.
"There are a lot of coaches who love teaching, but we love coaching as part of that, too?" said Dave Nelson, athletic director at Dover Bay. "It's such a big part of what we do. It's a big part of the culture and the community of every school in Nanaimo, and provincewide."
School sports seasons haven't been shut down. Elementary school district and zone track and field championships have been scuttled, but B.C. School Sports announced this week that almost all high school spring sports seasons will continue.
In Nanaimo, however, there may be a shortage of participating teams. That's because School District 68 has a long-standing policy that all sports teams operate with a school staff sponsor. Parents or community coaches won't be permitted to pick up the slack.
"The policy's not new, it's just been overlooked or not really followed," said Nelson. "All of a sudden with this magnifying glass on extracurricular activities, now it's come out."
Bill Rounis, vice-principal at Cedar Community Secondary School, said the girls' soccer team was going to be led by a community coach. On Tuesday he was waiting to find out how other Nanaimo schools were going to proceed with their teams.
"I think there's going to be similar decisions throughout," he said.
That was the hope, said Nelson, but now he doesn't think there's going to be any kind of district-wide consensus.
"Some coaches will choose to continue and we'll support them as best we can and some will choose not to and in those cases, we won't be able to offer a team and we'll have to shut the season down," he said.
Woodlands Secondary School athletic director Zed Malenica said principal Dave Stupich can coach girls' soccer, since he is an administrator. Over at John Barsby Community Secondary School, athletic director Rob Stevenson said he can still run spring football by offering the program through the neighbourhood's South-Side Minor Football Association.
"There's definitely situations where teachers are going to go against the majority of the vote and continue to coach because they feel it's important and they feel like the union doesn't have the right to tell them what they can do on their own time," Nelson said.
Derek DeGear, president of the Nanaimo District Teachers' Association, said he isn't aware of any teachers who are refusing to comply with the union's vote.
"Somebody who's choosing to do otherwise is really disrespecting a difficult decision made by their colleagues?" he said. "The members spoke clearly that we can't volunteer while we're watching our entire rights as workers disappear, or the rights of kids to quality education."
DeGear said the union recognized, before last week's vote, that withdrawing extra-curriculars wasn't going to come without a reaction from the community.
"It should bring to light all the extra work that people count on that go beyond the school day," he said.
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