St. FX Sports Academy exploring new activities

By RYAN MCCRACKEN on March 20, 2021.

rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com@MHNMcCracken

Students at the St. Francis Xavier Sports Academy have been getting a kick out of their explore days this month.

While COVID-19 restrictions have hampered the program’s ability to get out in the community, they were able to take part in a few kickboxing and karate classes at Karate-Do Academy this week.

“With the restrictions, we haven’t been able to do some explore days with our academy. So today we got to come here as kind of our first big explore day,” academy instructor Kennedy Werre said Tuesday. “I’m so happy that they allowed us to come and do karate and kickboxing. Next week we’re going to do rock climbing and dryland training (at Badlands Training Centre).”

After taking part in either kickboxing or karate on Tuesday, students returned to Karate-Do on Thursday to participate in the other sport.

Grade 6 student Brielle Melle says it was a lot of fun to get out and be active with her class, especially considering many schools haven’t been so lucky this year.

“It’s really nice because lots of other schools and stuff aren’t able to do this. It’s really cool that we actually get to do something during this time,” said Melle, adding she looks forward to Badlands Training Centre next week.

“I’m really excited to go there. It’s always really exciting to try new things during the academy.”

The St. FX Sports Academy focuses on four core sports in baseball, basketball, volleyball and soccer, but Werre says programming extends well past those playing surfaces through explore days like these.

“We do those four core sports and then we go and do different days. We’re going to go golfing, hopefully, when it’s nicer outside, then do horseshoes and stuff like that,” said Werre, adding kickboxing and karate was certainly a success.

“They have had so much fun. I think they’re exhausted from doing it but they were amazing.”