SUBSCRIBE NOW! Receive fresh local content 5 days a week, to your door!
Contact
Citizen Reader Sales: 250-562-3301
Contact Us
Classified: 250-562-6666 Reader Sales: 250-562-3301 Switchboard: 250-562-2441
Thursday, January 5, 2017 | www.pgcitizen.ca
The volunteer city
18 of 52
Citizen photo by JAMES DOYLE
Edna Stitt, is a long time volunteer for both the Prince George Spruce Kings, and Cariboo Cougars and is this week’s Volunteer of the Week.
Sports-minded volunteer is still in the game
Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca
I
t really is for the love of the game. Edna Stitt, 70, has been into sports all her life, playing hockey at about six years old right up until three years ago when she finally hung up her skates from playing defence in the local ladies’ league. But she never left the arena. Stitt volunteers with the Spruce Kings and the Cariboo Cougars and made her way from the end of the ice in charge of the goal light to the penalty box and now scorekeeper. “It’s a bit of a process,” said Stitt. “You get a different view of the game from each angle.” She’s been with the Spruce Kings for nearly 20 years and the Cariboo Cougars for about five. Stitt also refereed all stages of midget hockey from pee wee to juvenile. It was a bit unusual for a girl to play hockey at six years old in Williams Lake back then. “And my mom always said ‘if you get hit with the puck, don’t come crying to me’ and I never did,” laughed Stitt. During the off-season, she’s over at the baseball diamonds announcing, changing the scoreboard and scorekeeping
S
ports has been me for 70 years and you have to give back to a certain extent so my volunteering gets me into the game. Now I find because of my age I need to get out and find a purpose to get up some mornings and some days my purpose is to go to the Spruce Kings game and other days it’s to go to the Cariboo Cougars game. And that’s what I do. — Edna Stitt in the senior men’s league, while she played and umped fast pitch for decades. In 1958, when Stitt was 12, her family moved to Prince George from Williams Lake. They moved when her father, Jim, left the Williams Lake Tribune to work at the Prince George Citizen as a typesetter. Stitt worked at the Citizen for a time, too.
Stitt’s mom, Jean, always came to her ball games and would have a little piece of paper to write down the score, including home runs, hits and errors. She ended up keeping score for the league. “And I followed in her footsteps,” said Statt, whose father suddenly passed away at 52 years old, so all the parenting fell to her mother who felt it was
important to support her daughter in her sporting activities. Looking ahead, Stitt is happy to be volunteering during the Telus Cup national midget hockey championship, hosted by the Cariboo Cougars at CN Centre from April 24 to 30. Stitt will be part of the team of off-ice officials coordinated by Tom Baratta, the same person who organizes volunteers for the Spruce Kings and the Cariboo Cougars. During her scorekeeper volunteering time, technology has crept into the mix, proving to be a bit of a challenge. “Computers and me – oh my God!” laughed Stitt, who’s still trying to work it all out but she and sports go together like skates on ice. “I’m a sports nut,” she said, noting her faithful support of the Blue Jays baseball team, the Raptors basketball team and even the Vancouver Canucks. “Sports has been me for 70 years and you have to give back to a certain extent so my volunteering gets me into the game. Now I find because of my age I need to get out and find a purpose to get up some mornings and some days my purpose is to go to the Spruce Kings game and other days it’s to go to the Cariboo Cougars game. And that’s what I do.”