‘It’s all about the little kids’

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This article was published 23/04/2019 (2641 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For Melrose Park Community Centre president Susan Carson, community is everything.

Carson, like many volunteer board members across the city, first got involved with the local club over 30 years ago, when her kids started playing community centre sports.

“I started off doing the canteen supplies, when the community club was small,” Carson said. “Then I started filling out grants. The first grant we did was the hall, in order to get revenue to match the other grants.”

On the walls inside the club hang pennants from city championship hockey, baseball and soccer teams as far back as 1962. 

“There’s my brother,” Carson said, pointing to a photo from 1975, then to another from 1994. “And there’s my son.”

Founded in 1959, Melrose Park added its hall in 1987. Since then, the club has added a garage and has completed a number of smaller interior and exterior renovations, both to accommodate programming and to upgrade the facilities.

“There’s always something to do, always,” Carson said, adding that Melrose Parks regularly makes use of  City of Winnipeg renovation grants. 

In recent years, it has upgraded the flooring in the hall and removed six small dressing rooms from the basement, replacing them with a room for the cheerleading program, which the City now uses for mini-gymnastics on the weekends.

“That’s huge for us,” Carson said. “What a great space we have.”

While the River East Minor Hockey Association makes use of Melrose Park’s three outdoor hockey rinks during winter months, the location has also developed a long-standing relationship with the Kildonan Sports spongee league.

“They’ve been out of here a long time,” Carson said, noting that the league’s playoff weekends, which are held annually in the middle of February, are among the club’s busiest each year.

The club also takes registration for mini-soccer and for the Winnipeg Phoenix FC.

Carson, who is a grandmother of a budding young soccer player, particularly enjoys the energy that the annual mini-soccer windup brings to Melrose Park.

“That is my favourite day of the whole year,” she said with a smile. “It’s all about the little kids. It’s so much fun. That’s why I’m still here.”

Melrose Park is one a few community centres in northeast Winnipeg that resist online registration for sports.

“It’s all in-person,” Carson said. “We do that so they can see what we’ve got here, to rope them into being coaches.”

Melrose Park is also home to outdoor beach volleyball courts.

“We host three high school tournaments through Manitoba Volleyball,” Carson said. “It’s nuts. They have music going, kids everywhere. That’s tons of fun. ”

Key to keeping Melrose Park running is a very popular weekly Wednesday night bingo.

“That’s the big one,” Carson said. “We’d never get rid of it.” 

A social hall is available for rent, but Carson added they don’t get many bookings, and that the hall is not rented out for birthday parties. With only a few part-time employees, she said that it’s not worth it. Having more volunteers might make something like that an option, but like many other centres, Melrose struggles with getting people to donate their time.

“Our (volunteer) board is excellent,” Carson said. “We have one volunteer (who) runs our canteen for bingo on Wednesdays. We need that canteen open. She’s been here every Wednesday, or if she doesn’t come her daughter does. That’s the only volunteer we have, other than the board.”

Sheldon Birnie
Managing editor

Sheldon Birnie is the managing editor of the Free Press Community Review. Email him at sheldon.birnie@freepress.mb.ca or call him at 204-697-7112

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