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School sports hit by labour dispute

The rugby and track and field seasons are quickly becoming casualties of the battle between public school teachers and the government.
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District track and field meets and other school sports have fallen victim to work-to-rule job action by teachers.

The high school rugby and track and field seasons are quickly becoming casualties of the labour dispute between public school teachers and the provincial government.

Abbotsford-Mission district track meets have been cancelled until further notice, as work-to-rule job action by teachers has resulted in a shortage of volunteers available to run them.

A handful of rugby programs are still soldiering on, but their futures hinge on a B.C. Teachers’ Federation vote April 17-18. The BCTF will ask its 41,000 members whether they are in favour of a province-wide withdrawal of voluntary services, which would include sports and other extracurricular activities.

“All the local public schools have individually voted whether to do extracurriculars or not, and as far as I know, pretty much all the schools have voted to stop,” said Graham Neufeld, a teacher at Rick Hansen Secondary who serves as the Abby-Mission district track and field co-ordinator. “So there’s simply no way to organize a track meet, because everybody needs to be involved for a meet to take place.

“It’s very unfortunate – I don’t think anybody wants to stop (coaching). But people just feel sort of forced into a corner. At this point, there’s a sense of wanting to stand united with all the other teachers at your school and sort of speak with one voice for now.”

At Yale Secondary, track coach Trevor Wight is holding informal after-school workouts to keep his students involved. He’s also encouraging his athletes to join the Valley Royals, and if they can’t make it across town to train at Rotary Stadium, he’s worked out an arrangement with the local track club to run a satellite training group at Yale.

“I love the sport . . . and I don’t want it to fizzle out,” Wight explained. “I train by myself anyway, just to keep fit, and I have no problem with these kids coming out and running with me.

“It’s very unfortunate that it’s come to this. I’m hoping for a miracle, I suppose, that this whole labour business can get resolved so that we can have a track season. But I’m not holding my breath.”

For some elite athletes, scholarships are on the line.

Chantel Desch, a Grade 12 student at Yale who runs the 200 metres and 400 metres, said she can deal with the Abby-Mission meets being scrapped. But she’s concerned the B.C. high school championships might be cancelled as well, and she was hoping a strong performance on the provincial stage would solidify an athletic scholarship to Simon Fraser University.

“I’m not really affected as much by the Abby-Mission meets, but more by the higher level meets,” she noted. “The most important meet is the B.C.’s.”

“We’re all just going to have to make a few separate arrangements and make more effort personally to finding other ways to compete,” said Francesca Jackman, a track athlete at W.J. Mouat Secondary who also trains with the Royals.

“I hope that a lot of people would look at signing up for club meets.”

On the rugby scene, Yale, Robert Bateman and Abby Collegiate’s senior boys teams are still running, but Hansen and Mouat have pulled the plug.

“It was obviously the toughest decision we’ve had to make as teachers,” Mouat coach Chris Farley said. “I think we flip-flopped several times before we came to a decision (not to coach). No one wins in it. We just felt it needed to be done.”

Bateman and Abby Collegiate are the only local senior girls rugby programs still operational, and that’s only because their primary coaches are from the community rather than faculty.

With so many teams shutting down, it’s hard to schedule games. Bateman coach Jen Ross said that out of seven teams in the AA Fraser Valley league, only three remain.

“It is difficult,” Ross said. “We don’t want to not support the teachers, but at the same time, the kids are the ones that are losing out.”

Peter Cannon, coach of the Abby Collegiate senior girls, noted that his Grade 12-laden team was expected to be a top contender for the provincial title. But it’s up in the air whether the B.C. high school championships will happen this year.

“We’re hopeful that the leagues and the provincial tournaments will be allowed to proceed,” he said. “All I know at this point is, the co-ordinator for the B.C. high school AA league has told us to get as many games in as possible before April 17, when the vote takes place with the BCTF.”