By Jaeden Demelo

Engage Sport North

Engage Sport North developing athletes through afterschool program

Feb 6, 2025 | 4:40 PM

PRINCE GEORGE— Engage Sport North (ESN) run the Vim and Vigour program for athletes aged 10-19 in Northern BC. It’s a program that builds off the teaching of physical literacy and fundamental movement skills to build strength and capacity while reducing risk of injury.

“It’s the gold standard of athlete development in Prince George. We have coaches that are certified to deliver strength, Olympic lifting and gymnastics. We program all of that into our and bigger program. It’s an afterschool program that kids can come to, or athletes can come to, to continue developing their sport outside of their specific sport,” said ESN Manager of Sport Development, Olivia McClair.

Along with providing high performance training in the north, it also plays a big part for the young athletes socially.

“When we look at the well-being of young athletes, we want them to keep that social net, we want them to have friends, we want them to stay at their local school so that sport doesn’t become everything…It helps to grow the community, (because) if you can keep your top level athletes in the community, the younger athletes have someone to look up to,” said ESN Director of High Performance, Simon Lamarche.

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While it makes a big difference that the athletes can stay in Prince George to train, ESN also provides very flexible scheduling options for their Vim and Vigour program.

“We’ve tried to make this program as accessible as possible in the sense that the registration is monthly. The programs run from Monday to Thursday from 4 to 5:30 and from month to month, the athlete can pick the frequency that they would like. Basically they can pick the schedule and they can change their schedule every month so that they can make it work around their schedule,” said Lamarche on the programs flexibility.

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Email: jaeden.demelo@pattisonmedia.com