Calgary Yacht Club (CYC) won the CIR Reality “In my backyard” contest which will allow youth an opportunity to develop athletic skills and meet new friends.
Laurie Dunn CYC Manager of six years saw that the CYC required a sail boat trailer in order to travel to regattas to compete in races.
“We found that we were always struggling to transport boats to away regatta’s, so then that limits the number of kids that can go because you can’t get boats there,” Dunn said.
She added, “Sail boat trailers are not something that you just go to the store and buy, they need to be built.”
The CYC youth program has been conducting fundraisers including, cooking an Irish meal for 70 people, hosting a talent auction, and washing boats to raise funds for purchasing a sail boat trailer.
“When this opportunity came up we decided this is what we really needed,” Dunn said.
When Dunn found out that the CYC won $5,000 for the CIR Reality “In my backyard” contest she was in disbelief.
“We were so excited, we had parents who stepped up to the plate. It’s exciting to see parents that invested in their kid’s life, and in this club,” Dunn said.
Meaghan Sullivan, a parent who dedicated her time to gaining around 700 votes for the CIR Reality “In my backyard” contest said she took to her social media.
“I put up a public post on Facebook, and I would just update it every few hours to let people know how we were doing. It just blew up on Facebook,” Sullivan said.
Winning the funds to purchase a sail boat trailer is a huge deal to the CYC as they have had to borrow a trailer from the Alberta Sailing Association (ASA) to get to regattas in the past.
“This is huge, the youth team has been growing significantly, we need the trailer, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to travel, and part of being a part of a youth race team is to actually race, we can’t just expect other sail clubs to come and race on our lake,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan added, she was so relieved to find out the CYC won.
“We worked for hard to get all of those votes. We pulled every life line that we possibly had, from our kindergarten school teachers all the way to people in our lives today. We called on everyone, and there was a lot of people invested,” she said.
The CYC Head Coach Brianna Brand said before the CYC would have to shuffle things around at the last minute and find half way solutions to get youth to regattas to race.
“We want our program to continue to grow, we want more and more young athletes to get involved we wanted to be able to access a larger trailer, so we can take more and more kids to events and help them develop in the sport, and create some lifelong passion,” Brand said.
CYC coach Andrew Baird added, the amount of support from everybody at the CYC is amazing, it’s fun to see the youth team grow and develop, but most importantly all of the youth are friends.
“There have been multiple times where there isn’t enough wind to go racing, and we look out on the water and all of the kids are out there playing together,” Baird said.
Dunn added, “We want more families here, we don’t want them sitting 900 people deep on the beach, come here, you have access to the water.
“We’re not a snotty little club, we’re a super fun place to hang out,
you don’t have to sail to belong here, we’re just a place to go.”
The CYC is always open to accepting new people onto the team. To get involved please visit the CYC Website at https://calgaryyachtclub.wildapricot.org/.
