Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre has made several changes to its programming in order to adhere to the new COVID-19 public health guidelines set out by the provincial government.
The main impacts the recent restrictions have on the facility has to do with rentals for local user groups and group fitness classes, according to programs manager Brooke Sabourin.
“Both of those things had to stop immediately,” she said. “But we were ready to have that type of restriction to go into place because it had already gone into place in Calgary, so we had our plans ready to go.”
In place of the group fitness and boot camp classes, the facility has expanded into the spaces where those programs occurred to give individuals more space to work out.
For those enrolled in boot camp programs, front desk staff will distribute a list of exercises that would have been done in class.
The facility's arenas, which would usually be fully booked by various hockey clubs in the community, are now open to public skating – an activity that is still permissible as non-group fitness, under the province’s regulations.
“Now you can come in and spin whenever you want, or do your boot camp whenever you want and we’ll give you a self-guided plan to take with you,” Sabourin said.
Under the recent regulations, in-person businesses must operate at 25 per cent capacity, but that has not affected the number of members allowed at Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre, Sabourin said.
“We’re so large that our actual 25 per cent capacity is higher than the number of people we’re allowing in each space anyways,” she said. “That hasn’t changed anything for us at all. We’re very fortunate that with social distancing and the spaces we’ve set up that hasn’t affected numbers at all.”
Michelle Everett, sales and marketing manager with Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre, said cleaning protocols have remained unchanged at the facility, as they have either met or exceeded Alberta Health Services standards already.
“We take our stay-clean pledge quite seriously,” she said.
Everett noted the facility's hours of operation have been temporarily reduced. Currently, the hours of operation are 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends.
The current restrictions are temporary and will be in place until Dec. 18, when the Province will re-evaluate the public health situation.Sabourin said that the facility has a number of contingency plans in place when the province announces its next course of action with regards to COVID-19.
“As usual we have plans [A through G], depending on what happens with those regulations. In a perfect world we would go back to operating how we were before these regulations were put in place,” she said.
For a full list of changes at the facility visit slsfamilysportscentre.com
