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Maple Ridge BC Games team visits Lhtako Quesnel event

Butler: ‘It’s all about creating a great experience for the kids’
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Members of the Maple Ridge 2024 BC Summer Games team were at the Lhtako Quesnel BC Winter Games to see how that event came together. (Ernie Daykin Facebook/Special to The News)

President Laura Butler and other key members of the Maple Ridge 2024 BC Summer Games Society recently got a first-hand look at how a Games are run.

The group of 16 were guests at the Lhtako Quesnel 2024 BC Winter Games, which took place from from Feb. 22-25.

The Games will be held in Maple Ridge from July 18 to 21, and 12 local directors have been recruited to organize a number of key areas including accommodations, food services, transporation and more.

“It was a great experience for the directors,” said Butler. “We buddied up with our counterparts up there, and got to see how all the pieces come together.”

She was impressed by how the athletes enjoyed the Games in Lhtako Quesnel, and said that has to be the goal for Maple Ridge.

“It’s all about creating a great experience for the kids,” said Butler.

She noted that the Games in Quesnel were different – and more than just in that they are winter sports versus summer in Ridge. The summer event in the Lower Mainland will be much larger. The Games in Quesnel had about 800 athletes, and Maple Ridge expects to host about 2,800, with some estimates over 3,000, in addition to almost 600 coaches and 375 officials.

Quesnel was also jointly hosted by the Lhtako Dene Nation and the City of Quesnel, as full partners from the beginning of the process.

Butler said the City of Maple Ridge is the official host, but plans to involve the Katzie First Nation, and seek opportunities to partner with them.

“We are working to ensure the lands we share and we’re hosting on will be honoured,” she said.

The Games were to be held in Maple Ridge in 2020, but the event was pre-empted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are games events coming up, including a March 17 recruitment drive kickoff, when games directors and chairs will be at community events and facilities, to start signing up volunteers through www.bcsummergames.ca.

Butler said the members of the Maple Ridge delegation were “treated like Games family,” and they returned from Lhtako Quesnel with a new focus.

“The light’s gone on, we see the big picture, and this is the time for planning our Games.”

READ ALSO: Maple Ridge BC Summer Games key volunteers hold rally



Neil Corbett

About the Author: Neil Corbett

I have been a journalist for more than 30 years, the past decade with the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News.
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