COCHRANE— Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre has had to make several changes to its programming in order to adhere to the new COVID-19 public health guidelines set out by the provincial government.
The biggest impacts the recent restrictions have had on the facilities is the rentals of the facilities that were available to local user groups and group fitness classes which have had to stop since the announcements, said programs manager Brooke Sabourin.
“Both of those things had to stop immediately,” she said. “But we were ready to have that type of restriction to go into place because it had already gone into place in Calgary, so we had our plans ready to go.”
In place of the group fitness and boot camp classes, the facility has expanded into the spaces where those programs took place to give individuals more space to work out.
For those enrolled in boot camp programs, the front desk staff will be giving out a list of exercises that would have been done in class.
The arenas, which would usually be fully booked by various hockey clubs in the community are now open to public skating, which is still permissible as a non-group fitness activity under the province’s regulations.
“Now you can come in and spin whenever you want, or do your boot camp whenever you want and we’ll give you a self-guided plan to take with you,” Sabourin said.
One of the recent regulations is that in-person businesses must operate at 25 per cent capacity, but that has not affected the number of members allowed in the facility at Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre, Sabourin said.
“We’re so large that our actual 25 per cent capacity is higher than the number of people we’re allowing in each space anyways,” she said. “That hasn’t changed anything for us at all. We’re very fortunate that with social distancing and the spaces we’ve set up that hasn’t affected numbers at all.”
Michelle Everett, sales and marketing manager with Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre, said that the cleaning protocols have remained unchanged at the facility, as they have either met of exceeded Alberta Health Services standards already.
“We take our stay-clean pledge quite seriously,” she said.
Everett noted that the hours of operation have been temporarily reduced at the facility. Currently, the hours of operation are 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays, and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends.
The current restrictions will be in place until Dec. 18, when the province will re-evaluate the public health situation.
Sabourin said that the facility has a number of contingency plans in place when the province announces its next course of action with regards to COVID-19.
“As usual we have plans A, B, C, D, E, F and G, depending on what happens with those regulations. In a perfect world we would go back to operating how we were before these regulations were put in place,” she said.
For a full list of changes at the facility visit slsfamilysportscentre.com/.
