Duane Hicks
Looking to volunteer in the New Year? How about helping out with Fort Frances Special Olympics?
The organization is looking for more people to coach its five-pin bowling program, as well as start up a bocce program in the spring, said community co-ordinator Gaby Hanzuk, who makes up the local Special Olympics executive along with treasurer Ellen Caul and secretary Roz Calder.
“It always just me and Roz and Ellen, and sometimes those girls need a break,” noted Hanzuk.
“It would be nice to have a few extra people that I can count on to come and help with five-pin bowling.”
Special Olympics’ five-pin bowling is on hiatus for the holidays but will resume Jan. 21.
It takes place every Wednesday from 3 p.m. to 4:30-5 p.m.
Bowlers also attend one tournament a year. It’s a full weekend tournament in April, which usually involves some travel.
Coaches’ expenses for tournaments are covered by Special Olympics while fundraising is done to ensure the athletes’ costs are covered as much as possible, said Hanzuk.
Bowling starts at the end of September and closes out with the tournament in April.
As of right now, five-pin bowling is the sole Special Olympics’ winter activity here.
“That’s mainly because every ability level can bowl,” Hanzuk explained.
She noted there used to be more winter programs, but organizers found the season was too short (factoring in the winter break) and too reliant on the weather being just right (i.e., snowy enough but not too cold).
“If we had an indoor sport, we would love that,” Hanzuk said. π“We used to do curling but that became a little bit too expensive.”
As for the summer, several local Special Olympics’ athletes do track and field.
There also used to be a softball program but it became difficult to run.
“Once again, our athletes’ ability levels are so diverse,” stressed Hanzuk. “We have everybody from Ray Bedard to Clifford Hatfield.
“If you look at that whole mix of guys, sometimes it dangerous for them,” she noted.
“They love baseball but we just don’t offer it anymore because it’s dangerous for some of them.
“But if we have enough people that are interested that are higher functioning, we will put together a practice with them and have some fun stuff, and then hook up with a team in Thunder Bay,” Hanzuk said.
But Special Olympics would like to expand the number of sports offered here, with bocce (lawn bowling) being at the top of Hanzuk’s wish list.
“If I can find somebody who’s willing to do that sport with them, we would absolutely do it,” she remarked.
“That is one of those same things like bowling, where almost every ability level could do that one; even somebody in a wheelchair could manage bocce ball.”
If someone would like to coach bocce here, contact Hanzuk (275-3764), Caul (487-2656), or Calder (275-9500).
The sport would run in the late spring and into summer.
Own reward
Hanzuk has been involved with Special Olympics locally since 1988, and has stuck with it because it’s so rewarding to work with the athletes.
“I think the biggest thing about Special Olympics’ programs is you’re almost always with that same athlete for years and years,” she noted.
She said as long as that athlete is capable and willing, and you’re capable and willing, you can work together and see that athlete—and that friendship—grow.
“Some of those athletes, like Clifford Hatfield and Jack McLeod, I’ve been with them for 27 years,” Hanzuk said.
“That’s the really nice part of it—they’re family.
“You’re not losing 20 athletes every four years and then a new group comes in,” she added. “That doesn’t happen here.
“They only leave when they can no longer do it.”
Likewise, Special Olympics volunteers usually only stop if they move or have another serious change in their life circumstances.
To volunteer, contact Hanzuk, Caul, or Calder.
Meanwhile, Special Olympics here and elsewhere is expected to benefit from its new partnership between Lions Clubs of District 5M-10, which covers clubs in Northwestern Ontario and northeastern Minnesota.
Hanzuk said the Lions sponsor many different things, which are included on a list called their “Parade of Green,” and Special Olympics is now one of them.
Hanzuk, who had been the Special Olympics regional co-ordinator for eight years, will be working with a fellow Lion from Bemidji to spearhead an initiative to link up existing Lions clubs to sponsor any Special Olympics’ groups in their respective communities.
The aim also is to start new groups in Lions’ communities where there is a need for them.
“Our biggest thing is to make sure that the money being raised for Special Olympics is going to them; making sure it goes to who needs it the most, who are, of course, the athletes themselves,” Hanzuk stressed.
The initiative also will benefit places like Fort Frances, where there is a well-established Special Olympics’ organization and a history of Voyageur Lions helping it raise funds.
The Voyageur Lions may have been the first Lions Club anywhere to financially sponsor two Special Olympics’ athletes—2014 “Voyageur Lion of the Year” Shelly Haney and Christina Carrier—to join the club by covering their annual dues.
In return, Haney and Carrier have been encouraged to go out and “pound the pavement” to get pledges for the “Polar Plunge” held here each New Year’s Day.
But the Lions’ involvement with Special Olympics here is expected to grow even more.
For example, Hanzuk said she’ll try to get more Lions from the several clubs in this district to get involved in Special Olympics as volunteers.
She noted the notion of Lions Clubs adopting Special Olympics was something Voyageur Lions’ charter members Val and Jim Martindale had talked to her about several years ago, but she didn’t have the free time then.
“It’s come up again and now I’m ready for it,” Hanzuk said.
“I’m ready to broaden my horizons and certainly help out the Voyageur Lions Club, plus all of the other Lions Clubs around the area.
“I already have a lot of contacts, and know a lot of the process as far as starting new clubs . . . what you have to do to register, the paperwork, and know all of the rules to most of the sports,” she added.
“If there is a Lions Club in a community and there is no Special Olympics, that’s going to change,” she pledged.
