At least one local youth sports organization isn’t planning on getting too stressed over the new mandate requiring its athletes to be fully vaccinated.
The mandate, which began Dec. 8, requires youth between 12 and 17 to show proof of at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine and proof of two doses no later than Feb. 16, 2022, in order to enter the facility as participants or spectators.
Until now, youth have been exempt from the proof-of-vaccination policies at recreation facilities, provided they were entering as participants.
“Most of our clientele has been double vaccinated, but there are a few who don’t believe in vaccination for whatever reason — whether it’s freedom of choice or they don’t believe in the science,” David Islam, co-owner of the Mariposa School of Skating, told BarrieToday. “We don’t prescribe to a particular view… (but) at the end of the day, we are a private business in a public facility and we have to toe the line.”
Islam said the school, which runs its head office out of the city-owned and -operated Allandale Recreation Centre on Bayview Drive, has been lucky over the course of the pandemic in that the school and Skate Ontario have done a good job mitigating any issues due to the health and safety measures and protocols they’ve put in place.
Where they have felt a bit of a sting due to the various restrictions that have been put in place, he said it's not so much with their domestic clientele, but rather with many of their international clientele who come to Barrie to train.
“Travel is still tricky and while we have had some of our Southeast Asian and European clients come back to train, many (others) have opted to stay away,” he said, noting the club works with everything from grassroots skaters right up to international skaters, as well as hockey players.
With the new provincial directive requiring anyone age 12 and up to show proof of vaccination having kicked in last week, Islam said while the school has received some push back, there’s not much they can do about it.
“Rightly or wrongly, where we have been lucky is a lot of this stuff has been mandated from the province, and then our health unit has taken things to a bit more of an extreme measure (similar) to a number of health units across the province,” he said.
“As far as parents coming in to watch their kids, if they’re not double vaccinated they can’t do that," Islam added. "Do we get pushback? Sure, we always get emails and comments, (but) we defer them to their MPP. It’s not our decision to make.
"We are just trying to get kids on the ice and coaches working in the safest way possible. We have had an exceptional track record of doing this safely. It’s not us who make up these mandates, we just have to follow them because we are at a public facility.”
