The countdown is on.
Special Olympics athletes and volunteers gathered in the Kin Centre Atrium in Prince George this morning (Tuesday), marking 100 days to the start of the Special Olympics BC Games.
“The excitement is unbelievable, we’ve got lots of folks that are helping out as volunteers,” said Co-Chair of the Planning Committee Lyn Hall.
“The support is unbelievable, just unbelievable.”
Hall said now it’s time to glue everything together.
“We’ve got our venues, we’re working on transportation within the games venues, we’re working on food, provisions we’re going to provide to our athletes,” he said.
“This is where we’re really in the crunch time, and the planning is done, but now we’re fine tuning it and making sure that we’re ready to go.”
Director of Volunteers Donna Flood said a thousand volunteers are needed for what they want to do.
“We’ve got working in food services, we’ve got over a thousand athletes we have to feed breakfast, lunch and dinner to, so all hands on deck there,” she said.
“We have all our venues where we’re looking for volunteers to support accommodation, but also the different venues for the sport, so if you want to see the basketball, you want to see the lawn bowling, sign up for any of those to help out. Transportation, logistics, even just administrative services, helping us do some data entry, and then even before the games, we’re looking at setting up at the different markets, going to different service groups and just getting out there and soliciting volunteers, so we have a job literally for everybody.”
People can sign up to be volunteers on the Special Olympics BC Website here.
The Special Olympics will kick off with the annual Torch Run on July 9th, put on by the RCMP.
“We will be posting the route later on, but it’s basically going to go from our RCMP detachment on Fourth and Victoria, all the way to CN Centre,” said Cpl. Jennifer Cooper of the Prince George RCMP.
“What we’re hoping to do is have lots of people come out, line the route, cheer on our athletes. It’s a different style of run than we normally have, so what we’re going be seeing is law enforcement officers partnered with Special Olympics athletes, holding the torch as we run along the route together.”
Cooper noted they’ll need volunteers for that event as well.
The Special Olympics BC Games will take place July 10th to 12th in Prince George.
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