Sports in Manitoba allowed to continue while in-person learning put on pause

The extension of Manitoba’s public health orders has some questioning why sports and recreation activities are being allowed to go ahead with students learning remotely next week.

It’s a question many are asking, including some parents, as public health officials urge people to limit their close contacts.

Keri D’Avignon-Nault, a parent and manager of two hockey teams in Ile des Chenes, said with cases of the contagious Omicron variant surging and hospitalizations rising parents and organizers are in a difficult position.

“People are concerned for their kids’ health, people are concerned about whether we should be playing hockey but there’s no school,” D’Avignon-Nault said in an interview. “And we’ve been trying to have conversations about whether we should be continuing with games, or forfeiting, or what that should look like.”

Tournaments are banned but the province is allowing indoor and outdoor sports and recreation to continue with proof of immunization or confirmation of a recent negative test result from a pharmacy for 12 to 17-year-olds. Everyone 18 and over needs to be fully vaccinated.

However, in the Interlake, league play has been postponed for one week.

“We’re just trying to do what we can to make sure that everybody’s still safe,” said Dave Underwood, director of the Interlake Minor Hockey Association.

Underwood said additional restrictions in some First Nations communities and rising COVID-19 cases on some other teams have also made it logistically challenging to schedule games.

He said league play will continue after the one-week pause if Hockey Manitoba and the public health orders still allow it.

“We’ve had the same questions from people saying how can we go ahead with hockey if school’s not even allowed so it played into the decision a little but not a whole lot,” Underwood said.

Ian McArton, Hockey Winnipeg’s executive director, said the association is continuing to allow regular season games.

McArton said some games have been cancelled where teams have been affected by COVID-19 and isolation requirements.

He said those games won’t be rescheduled due to concerns there won’t be enough time available to make them up.

“We’re still probably getting in 75 to 80 per cent of our games,” McArton said. “Things are going alright but obviously the numbers keep creeping up. If there was a press conference and more restrictions came into play, obviously we would be compliant with that.”

Andrew Green, instructor and owner of Innovative Martial Arts, said classes are continuing at his studio. Green said he’s also running a remote learning day camp while school’s out next week with attendance capped at 25 participants as per the public health orders.

“We run day camps,” Green said. “Once the announcement came from the province that schools are going back to remote learning for just the one week, we found a lot of parents were just in a bit of a panic as to what to do because they were expecting their kids to go back to school and they still have to work.”

“We can give the kids time to do their school work as part of that but also make sure they’re doing some martial arts and fitness things as we would normally do.”

D’Avignon-Nault said some coaches and parents are critical workers. She knows the benefits of sports are important for her kids and understands she doesn’t have to send them but she said that’s not an easy decision to make either.

“As much as I hate to say that for my children’s mental health…I think hockey needs to be put on pause, unfortunately,” she said.

Peter Woods, the executive director of Hockey Manitoba, said individual associations can make their own decisions on whether to put the season on pause but right now it’s allowing the games to go on as per the province’s public health orders.