Recent PHO changes affecting youth sports coaches, spectators

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“We’ve been asked by Northern Health to have some different protocols with our school events,” said Lee Karpenko, Assistant Superintendent for SD57. “Come and cheer on your student athletes, this is an important part of school.. and we want to make sure those are safe for our students and for the spectators.”

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All School District 57 sporting events will now have to abide by the rules, previously school-related events were exempt from having to check for immunization status.

The recent change forced School District 91 (Nechako Lakes) including Vanderhoof to shut out all spectators for the weekend.

In a statement posted to social media, SD91 asked for patience from parents as they work towards a solution.

“As we seek greater clarity on this order and investigate ways to create procedures to comply with the order, we will be regretfully removing ALL spectator access to SD91 sporting events in the short term. We know this is a hardship to parents and students and so we will be working with our schools to come up with potential solutions,” said Manu Madhok, SD91 Superintendent of Schools.

Other youth sports organizations are catching up on the recent health orders as well.

Prince George Minor Hockey has had to enforce the proof of vaccination program since earlier in October for spectators something they say has been an overwhelming success thanks to volunteers.

“Everything has gone really well so far, probably better than we had expected,” said Rob Connelly, Vice-President of PGMHA.

Minor hockey is now catching up on the latest changes, contacting all coaches, volunteers. and others involved to check vaccination status.

“We spent several hours Friday going through our team staff and everything, and we’re very close,” said Connelly.

Connelly said almost all of PGMHA’s teams have at least once coach who is double vaccinated, and the new rules should be manageable for the association.

SD57 and PGMHA both spoke about the appreciation for the patience of parents who make up the majority of their spectators as they work to implement the new system.

BC Hockey says they are not worried about losing coaches, or having major play interrupted in their member organizations due to unvaccinated team officials.