2014 SASG a huge success for Pincher Creek and area

Basketball at 2014 SASG
Megan Rainford photo

Toni Lucas

The Southern Alberta Summer Games (SASG) were a great success. The arrival of athletes and families from thirteen regions across southern Alberta provided several benefits to our community.

"Restaurants and downtown stores saw an influx of customers and our parks and facilities were utilized to their potential." It also stated, "This year’s Games will be leaving behind gently used sports equipment to schools and clubs in the community. The community will also benefit from improvements to the existing beach volleyball court, new dugouts at Lions Ball Park, new lines at the St. Michaels School track and new shale at the Lions Ball Park, Juan Teran and Sproule diamonds." - SASG website

Southern Alberta Summer Games Coordinator Kristen George commented on the number of people it takes to make months of work and planning into a smoothly ran event. "About 5 or 6 in the office, then of course there's Public Works and Parks that have been helping to maintain and do facility improvements. Then we had everyone on our committee, we had 20 people there, and there is our sports chairs. We probably have about 25 plus there. Then we have the rest of the volunteers. All of the volunteers have really stepped up and put in a lot of work as well." Each of the sports chairs had their own group of volunteers working with their event, accumulating to the 500 volunteers needed to run the games.

"You plan as much as you can, and of course there is always going to be some hitches along the way. You just have to have the resources in place to get everything going as quickly as possible."

"We have had incredible feedback. Everyone is having a great time, and everyone has said the sportsmanship has been great."

"It was all that we'd hoped it would be," said Pincher Creek Recreation Manager Diane Burt-Stuckey. "Even if every athlete had 2 people, still parents, family, grandparents - probably around 5000 people came." Burt-Stuckey said that a few of the visibly impacted businesses in the area included hotels, restaurants, and campgrounds.  She said she was "Hopeful that it spilled over to the grocery stores and other businesses. Hopefully everyone got a little benefit out of it." She added there is a plan in place to do a survey to find out from the businesses in town if and how they benefited.

For the Recreation Department staff and people at the pre-organization stage the event was a focus for over a year now.  It slowly gained momentum in terms of number of volunteers for the committee and increased staff for spring to help out: "I have to say overall that we all worked so well together and everybody just played to people's strengths. I'm amazed at the outcome of it all."

Diane Burt-Stuckey commented on how much cooperation was required to make this happen. "So many people were involved to make it successful. I think this was really good for our community."

A large part of the preparation was getting facilities put back in place and getting them ready.  Many little things were needed to bring the facilities up to a standard that the department, athletes, and visitors would be pleased with. She said that everyone was satisfied with the facilities, and the department got a lot of positive feedback, "In terms of the organization and how nice the facilities were and how friendly our community is. Sometimes we take our own community for granted and don't realize all the good things about it so it's nice to get that feedback from people."

The mass of organizers, volunteers, athletes and families all contributed to making these Games a great experience of competition and sportsmanship, as well as participation, in the events and the services of Pincher Creek.