Bookings for City of Kamloops rec facilities at all-time high during pandemic months

KAMLOOPS — Physical activity is an important piece of staying healthy and sane during the pandemic. The restrictions on the number of people have made it harder for citizens to get into some of the City facilities to stay active. That’s why the City of Kamloops has made it possible for residents to book spots at recreation facilities like arenas and pools in advance. That option has proven more popular than City staff could have imagined.

If you squint your eyes just right, you can almost imagine you’re somewhere in the Caribbean — instead of the Canada Games Aquatic Centre. In the middle of a pandemic, the pool might be the next best thing for Kamloops residents. According to City staff, they’re seeing as many registrations each week as they’d usually get for a whole season.

“Demand for our pools has been really high,” said Aquatics Program Supervisor Andrew Smeaton. “A thousand people are wanting to register online at the same time every weekend when it opens up. And we’re going through this every week, instead of three or four times a year.”

COVID-19 restrictions mean strict limits on the number of folks allowed into the pool at any given time. To deal with this, the city has increased the number of time slots available to help satisfy demand.

To try to accommodate more people, we’ve broken up our swim times into smaller chunks,” Smeaton says. “They’re about an hour long now. You used to be able to come in for a three-hour section.”

The pool is a great way to get out of the cold and forget about the winter weather for a little while. However, if you’re looking to embrace the cold, you can also register for public skating and Stick-n-Puck at city arenas.

“In a two-hour ice slot, we do two 45-minute ice times,” Active Living Coordinator Chelsea Tekonomy says. “That has allowed us to offer 18 public skate times in a week and 12 stick-puck-and-ring programs.”

The demand for public skating isn’t quite as high as it is for pools. However, the City says they’ve been able to fill up those slots the week before folks are able to hit the ice. The city is now working to adapt its PerfectMind booking system to accommodate the extra demand.

“There are some things you just can’t expect,” Smeaton says. “One-thousand registrations in a weekend is really substantial.”

“We’re really grateful for how everyone has been adapting to these new processes,” Tekonomy says. “Sometimes the online registration process isn’t as smooth or as perfect as it should be. We’re doing our best to adapt and we really thank everyone for their help.”

For more information on signing up for a skating or swimming time slot, you can visit the city’s website at Kamloops.ca.