It didn’t take BC Diving long to take advantage of the Host Community Sport Meeting held April 13 in Fort St. John in advance of the 2020 BC Winter Games. This meeting is a key milestone in the planning process for the Host Community that is tasked with delivering 15 sport competitions for BC's best young athletes, coaches and officials.

While in Fort St. John participating in the Games planning workshop, BC Diving’s Shannon Sullivan also delivered a coaching workshop to the three local dive coaches who head up a program in the north and their athletes.

“It was a natural piggy-back to the Host Community Sport Meeting,” says Sullivan who was a 2019 Sport BC Presidents Award winner.”Whenever we get the chance to mentor up and coming coaches, especially in the north, we take advantage of the opportunity.”

Local sport chairs had a chance to meet their provincial sport counterparts at the meeting and diving saw a chance to add pieces to their giant sport development puzzle for their sport and leverage the paid BC Games Society trip to the north.

“Lack of coaches is a huge problem in diving,” she continued. “It’s really hard work. So when we find people who have the passion and love for the sport, we want to keep them challenged and make them feel supported. We knew there were coaches up there so why wouldn’t we offer them mentoring experiences?”

That extra effort may have well turned into more volunteers and more participation for diving once the Games take place February 20-23, 2020.

“We understand the importance of developing coaches and now, after conducting the workshop, these coaches will be key volunteers for the diving competition next year.”

With less than a year to go, Fort St. John is on track to create an exceptional Games experience in the North for the provinces best young athletes, coaches and officials. And provincial sport organizations like BC Diving, will make sure the legacy of hosting the Games lives on in the form of sport development in the region.