By Linda Ip
Members of a local Boys and Girls Club expect to put old sneakers to good use this summer, thanks to a $50,000 donation from Nike and the Toronto Raptors basketball team.
The Fred C. McCann club on McArthur Avenue will receive a new, rubberized gym floor made with materials from recycled shoes. The floor replacement campaign is part of the Reuse-A-Shoe program headed by Nike and the Toronto Raptors. The two enterprises plan to provide new floors for Boys and Girls Clubs across Ontario.
The Fred C. McCann club isn’t the first location to receive a new floor from Nike. The St. Jamestown club outside Toronto got its floor in September 1995.
“We’re all quite excited about it,” says Dan Rees, manager of the McArthur Avenue and Orleans locations. “Our floor is in really bad shape now. We were looking at getting it retiled when all this happened.”
McCann’s present floor was put in when the location first opened in 1971. Rees says patches of tiles can be lifted up due to years of use. They have retiled the floors a few times over the years or used adhesive to hold it together.
Rees says the new floor will improve members’ playing abilities.
“You get a better grip,” he says. “With tiles, if they’re not waxed right, the floor can get slippery.
“I’ve heard if you want to play volleyball (on the new floor), you’ll need to wear knee pads because you won’t be able to slide.”
The Boys and Girls Club of Otttawa-Carleton celebrated its 75th anniversary on April 4. More than 200,000 children have been members since the first permanent club opened on Nepean Street. There are currently eight Ottawa locations with more than 3,000 children and youth between the ages of six and 18 as members.
Nike announced it was giving the money to the Ottawa Boys and Girls Club in March. The corporation withdrew its offer to pay for a new floor for a recreation centre after city councillors criticized the company’s labor practices in Third World countries.
Nike has donated basketball and ball hockey equipment to several clubs, including all the Ottawa locations.
“We have a very strong relationship with the Boys and Girls Club,” says Susan Kuruvilla, Nike Canada’s public affairs co-ordinator in Toronto. “We think it’s a great organization for kids.”
Kuruvilla says Nike has a long history of helping American Boys and Girls Clubs. Nike began donating money and equipment to the Boys and Girls Club of Ontario as part of its Participate in the Lives of All Youths (P.L.A.Y.) Canada campaign.
“This is the third year we’ve been working on a provincial basis with Nike and the Toronto Raptors,” says Ottawa executive director Georgina Jones.
The Boys and Girls Club had launched a campaign last August to raise money for McCann’s new floor.
“The Nike donation fitted very nicely with our plans,” says Jones.
This year Nike started a ball hockey program with the Ottawa Senators. The corporation donated goalie gear, hockey nets and sticks. It created the program in all Ontario locations with a National Hockey League team.
“Last summer we also sent three busloads of kids to participate in a Nike basketball program,” says Rees. “They spent the whole weekend in Toronto.”
Rees says he hopes the floor will be installed before the busy summer season.
“It will be quite an obstacle to get work done with all the summer activities,” he says. “We hope it will be done in as convenient a time as possible.”