Plenty of local support for Varsity View
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This article was published 23/04/2019 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Unlike other centres, Varsity View Community Club has no problem finding and maintaining volunteers.
“People who are here seem to stay here for a long time,” board president Murray Cunningham said. “The people and the staff running this ship are really good and that probably trickles down to the programs.”
The hall at 315 Laxdal Rd. has been operating in Charleswood since 1935 and the sportsplex at 4230 Ridgewood Ave. was built — largely through community fundraising — in the mid 1980s. Cunningham himself has been involved in Varsity View for roughly 13 years, even though his kids have long since aged out of the club’s sports programs.
“The people, seeing things grow, coming up with ideas and then putting them into action,” he said. “I just love all aspects of it.”
His first job as a teen was teaching kids how to skate at his local club but Cunningham says he’s noticed a shift in the role community centres play in neighbourhoods.
“There’s so many more things to do and even with the organized sports, even at eight, nine years old kids are playing these tiered-levels of hockey,” he said. “I never did that, I went and played on the outdoor rink.”
Varsity View has 13 board members and about 10 employees across both sites, which includes arena and nursery school staff. Organized sports are the biggest focus at Varsity View and the Falcons host hockey, ringette, ball hockey and softball teams. The club has a long-running weekly bingo but finding programs that are suitable and benefit the community are hard to come by.
“It’s hard to keep programs running. A lot of people come in and have great ideas and (through) no fault of their own it just doesn’t always stick,” Cunningham said.
Another issue facing the aging club is keeping up with necessary building repairs, which the board president acknowledges is a problem across Winnipeg.
“For them to fix all the community centres in the city it’s millions of dollars,” he said.
To maximize resources and tap a larger catchment area, Varsity View has tried joining forces with Westdale and Roblin Park community centres for signature events. A recent success was the 2018 breakfast with Santa.
“We held it at Roblin Park but we got three or four volunteers from each club, which was easy to do,” Cunningham said. “It was really rewarding and it was really good for the community as a whole and I think we’re going to try and do that a little bit more moving forward.”
In addition to its annual operating grant from the City, Varsity View makes its income from hall rentals, socials and yearly fundraisers for team parents.