Sportball offers kids opportunity to sample different activities

Sportball offers kids opportunity to sample different sports

BY ANDREW LIVINGSTONE

There are many excellent sport options for children, but how can they choose what they want to play if they don’t know what they might enjoy or how each game is played? That’s a problem that Sportball seeks to solve through its Multi-Sport program. In Multi-Sport, children between the ages of 16 months and 12 years learn the fundamentals of a different sport every week for a seven- to eight-week season.

“We break it down to its most simplest form, and we build from there,” says Tina Krupski, franchise owner and executive director of Sportball in South Saskatchewan. “So, if it’s basketball, we just start with dribbling. We won’t introduce an actual game to the little ones that are two years old — it’s just skill development at that point and having fun.”

Each skill within a sport can be explained as very basic movements, which makes them easy to remember and practice. “Our coaches use keywords in their demonstrations so that it’s so simple that we actually hear the kids saying those keywords over and over, and we hear the parents too,” says Krupski. “They use these keywords like ‘stretch, drop, kick’ — those are three keywords that you would use if you were going to punt a football.

“For the 16-month to threeand-a-half to four years old, it’s parent and child, so it’s a great

Through its Multi-Sport program, Sportball offers kids between the ages of 16 months and 12 years the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of a different sport every week during a two-month season. SUPPLIED

opportunity for the parents to also learn key words to use when teaching your kids how to dribble, or how to hit a ball, or how to strike a ball or kick a ball,” says Krupski.

In order to keep those fundamentals fun, Sportball coaches use imaginative stories and metaphors that enliven the activity and assist in learning. “So, they’re out there practicing dribbling, but we’re actually making it rain with the dribbling — the balls are the rain,” says Krupski. “For volleyball, especially with the little ones, even up to four to six years of age, we have the kids put their hands together for a volleyball bump, but, when we put our hands together, it is now a trunk. We’ve all turned into elephants.”

For parents who drop their children off, this can result in some confusing stories, says Krupski. “[Children] won’t tell you that we played volleyball or that we did a bump, they’ll tell you that, ‘We had elephant trunks, and it was no oranges, and it was really exciting and fun!’ and the parents will be like, ‘What was it though?’”

Recent lockdowns and restrictions have made programs like Multi-Sport difficult, but Krupski and her coaches have done their best to keep kids active and engaged. “We turned away a lot of families, which is so unfortunate,” she says. “When restrictions were that we couldn’t even be running in the community centres, I had overflowing emails saying, ‘Can we just go outdoors?’ It was pretty cold still, but families just wanted to keep being active and keep their kids doing the programming, so we moved outdoors.”

This fall, the program will begin outdoors after September long weekend, though restrictions may still interfere. “As soon as it’s a little bit chilly or we can’t get enough daylight, typically by mid-October, we’re looking to go indoors again,” says Krupski. “We’re still not sure what it’s going to look like, because we don’t know if the schools are going to be allowing us back in to rent their gyms or not.”

Still, the Sportball team is weathering the restrictions to bring fun and fitness to as many children as possible.

“I feel like we put a lot of time and effort into training our coaches and picking certain coaches that are fun, and engaging and just love being around kids,” says Krupski. “That’s the best feedback: when I hear that the coaches are doing an amazing job because the kids are loving it, and they’re coming back.”

For more information and registration, visit Sportball.ca.