SASKATOON SE EXPRESS - May 16-22, 2016 - Page 1
519 Nelson Road • 1702 8th St. • 802 Circle Dr. • 705 22nd St. • 1204 Central Ave. • 3330 8th St.
May 30,
Volume 14, Issue 19, Week of May 16, 2016
Saskatoonʼs REAL Community Newspaper
A group from the Christian Legacy Academy recently travelled to Guatemala on a 10-day mission. They are (back row from left to right): Dawn Beaudry, Luke Donauer, CJ Rysavy, Jon Hough, Daniel Reynolds, James Hough; middle row from left to right: Jordan Kitchen, Daniel Allcock, Levi Beaudry, Stephen Thuringer; front row from left to right: Kennedy Adams, Delena Martens, Bailee Weiler. Missing from the photo are Phil Beaudry and Jaimie Olchowski. (Photo Supplied)
On a mission
Christian school building a sports, academic legacy Cam Hutchinson Saskatoon Express t’s a little school that does. As in, how does the Legacy Christian Academy, with its 82 students from K-12, win provincial sports championships with such regularity that the walls of the gymnasium are covered with banners? The school must be recruiting players. Something is being added to the water over on Pinehouse Drive. How else could a school with so few students be so successful in sports? The boys’ team recently won the provincial 3A basketball title. That means they were tangling with some mighty big schools by comparison. The girls won the provincial 1A volleyball title last fall. “People assume we do (recruit),” said Lou Brunelle, who is the director of public relations and admissions at the school. He is also a former principal of the school and a proud father of two grads. “We have
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15 boys from Grade 10 to 12 of which 10 are on the basketball team. We have seven girls and they are all on the volleyball team. “We don’t recruit. We don’t say, ‘Hey, do you want to play sports?’ What we do is start them off young. They are not necessarily athletic, but everybody plays basketball as early as age seven or eight or nine. So they just play throughout their career. . . . If you are diligent we will train you in Grade 5, 6, 7, 8 and by the time you get to Grade 10 or 11 or 12, you might not be that athletic, but you have a skill set that is valuable to the team because we only have these small numbers. We have to work with what we have.” The school is currently on a quest to increase its numbers. Brunelle would like to see enrolment double to the 160 mark in the next three years. To help families get started, there will be no tuition for kindergarten students. There are also
reduced rates for children between grades one and five. Legacy Christian Academy is 50 per cent government funded with parents picking up the tab for the rest. Brunelle and his wife, Shirley, put their children through the school long before there was any government support. It wasn’t cheap. “It cost $65,000 to put our two kids through this school back in the day when I was working in here and making $25,000 or $30,000. We had part time jobs. We did fundraising. We taught swimming lessons. We taught boat safety lessons. We found other ways to make money because we would do anything to keep our kids in here from K to 12. “It’s the price of a brand new Lexus, but (the car) is going to rust and depreciate and what do I have? I have a couple of trophy kids that have always done us proud. I sit back and say, ‘Was it worth $65,000?’ Absolutely. Not a doubt.”
Brunelle has a photograph on his desk. He points to the faces and says how well each has done in life, whether it be as a professional and/or as a wonderful mother and father. He allows there are a small number of students who haven’t done as well. Success in sports draws attention, but it is just one facet of the school. “It’s a mix of academics, athletics and reaching out to the community, whether it is locally or internationally,” Brunelle said. A group of students are presently in Guatemala on a 10-day mission. “It’s the first trip we have ever done, so that’s a pretty big deal for us. How many Grade 11s and Grade 12s out there in Saskatoon go to a Third World country and just roll up their sleeves, do some dirty work and be a blessing to the locals? We are proud of that.” (Continued on page 8)