The Valley Park Go Green project team will be in action on Saturday (June 22) in the eighth annual Thorncliffe Park “Neighbours’ “Night Out”. The night begins a touch early, at 1pm in the afternoon and extends until 9pm on Overlea Boulevard, Toronto, between Thorncliffe Park Drive East and Thorncliffe Park Drive East. The overall event includes musical entertainment, games and activities for all ages, sports, arts and crafts, cultural activities and refreshments.
Valley Park will be using this opportunity to sign up boys and girls to take part in one (and possibly more than one) of the seven week cricket coaching camps that will operate this summer. The camps open with week one from July 2-6, 2013 with the last camp being from August 12-16, 2013. The camps aim to teach basic cricket skills to youth in a fun-filled enriched and safe environment.
The camps are sponsored by the Toronto District School Board’s Focus on Youth Toronto Program. Several Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute graduates, newly trained graduates of the Valley Park Go Green Cricket and Sport Centre of Excellence will provide coaching, with supervision from TNO youth outreach workers and volunteer adult staff coaches. The coaching panel will be joined by coaches from AussieX every Monday.
More information about “Neighbour’s Night Out” and on how to sign-up for the 2013 Summer Cricket Camps can be found through Valley Park’s “Go Green Cricket Field” website (http://www.gogreencricketfield.ca/”). The sessions for younger age groups are scheduled inside the Valley Park Middle School gym, with separate outdoor sessions at Flemingdon Park Cricket field for 15 years and older girls (10am to noon) and boys (1pm to 4pm).
Parents or guardians are required to provide a signed, hard copy authorizing each child’s participation in these camps.
It is pointed out that elite cricket coaching and other sports will not be available until 2014. But progress is being made by the leadership of the Valley Park Go Green Cricket field project and Cricket Centre of Excellence.
Some ideas about the development of the sports and environmental areas around the Valley Park Middle School under the Go Green Cricket Field project, including some high level project costs, can be found through the website’s link to an article titled “New turf for Toronto School “, which appeared in the “Canadian Gounds Keeper” in April 2013.
Canada Cricket Online has previously provided a link to an April 2013 story titled “Fresh batch of coaches ready to train young cricketers” that appeared in “South Asian Focus” about Valley Park developing coaches. A link to that article can also be found on the gogreencricketfield website.
Valley Park Middle School won the 2013 CIMA Toronto Mayor’s Trophy for Boys Middle Schools in 2013, and in the absence of competition from the other three cities this year, also seem to have become the inaugural GTA Boys Middle School Champions.
Some of the people involved in this project would seem to have the right mix of skills to deliver.
　
Eddie Norfolk