Sport Yukon and community services minister Richard Mostyn are exploring solutions to the growing pressures on sports and recreation facilities in the Yukon.
A meeting, which is part of an ongoing conversation on the state of sports facilities in the territory, was held on Nov. 30.
Sport Yukon executive director Tracey Bilsky said the meeting was the start of regular meetings with the minister as a way of making him aware of good news stories in sports, but also areas in which sports is experiencing barriers in the territory.
“The main topic was facilities space shortage for sport groups, mainly with high school-size gymnasiums which are oversubscribed,” she said.
She said there are more than 100 hours that sports and recreation groups in the territory want that they can’t get each month.
“Those hours are not meeting the demands,” she said.
She said the City of Whitehorse allocates gym time in schools, the Canada Games Centre and other facilities.
“What happens is that other sport groups are really not growing their programming anymore because they just don’t have the time in those gyms.”
Bilsky said what they have been advocating for is some consideration with building new schools to ensure that regardless of whether it’s an elementary school or a high school there are high school-size gymnasiums.
“That was one idea we proposed and we’re just sort of looking to the Yukon government to consider these ideas to come up with other ways in which the schools and our sport groups can work together, so that we can really optimize the space in those facilities.”
The solution, she said, is more gymnasium spaces and working with schools to come up with a system where if they’re not using space, then it’s easy for them to identify that and give it up for other users.
“We really need to come up with other solutions and identifying these kinds of barriers is something that is in the mandate letter for Minister Mostyn. So, I think he is interested in hearing these types of conversations and using Sport Yukon to gather this type of data.”
Another idea Bilsky said she is considering is a model she saw in Grand Prairie during the Arctic Winter Games in 2010.
“It was a new elementary school that had built two mini high school-size gymnasiums. I was amazed by that and they said it was a partnership between the Department of Education and the City of Grand Prairie where the school would use those gymnasiums until 5:30 p.m. So, they get all their teams to practise and then they would turn it over to community use from 5:30 p.m. onward. So something like that seems like a really efficient and creative way to allow more space in one single build, instead of having a multi-sport facility.”
She said this model allows the school flexibility for students to have training and practices and basically be done by dinnertime.
“Sometimes the kids practise up here in Whitehorse until 8 p.m. and, in some cases, the schools don’t turn the gymnasium over to the community until 9 p.m. So you really can’t have a youth soccer team from the community practising at 9 p.m. It’s just too late. So that was a way in which they worked together to ensure that it worked for both parties, and it was quite a partnership and as we know, partnerships are the way to go.”
Mostyn said he was pleased to meet with Sport Yukon.
“I’m happy to have committed to meeting with their team on a more regular basis going forward. We are looking into the issues connected to the growing pressures on current sports and recreational facilities, of which school gymnasiums play a big part.”
He said the department of Community Services is working with the department of Education on how to “maximize opportunities under the joint use agreements.”
Bilsky told the News the 2026 Arctic Winter Games, which will be hosted by the Yukon, was also discussed. She currently serves as the host society president of the games.
“Our discussion was just about some of the steps that we’ll need to take in the next three months to get the games host society rolling,” she said. “Then we also talked a bit about the host agreement that was going to be signed and essentially just the next steps in developing the governance board. It was just kind of a touch base and letting the minister know where we are at this point in time with the planning of the AWG.”
Contact Patrick Egwu at patrick.egwu@yukon-news.com