The community sport sector in Ottawa has pulled together to continue to support each other this year, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

In early June the Ottawa Sport Council (OSC) spearheaded the Ottawa Return to Play Roadmap initiative which brought together over 70 local sport organizations throughout the City of Ottawa to help enable the resumption of sport in the community. The roadmap is a toolkit based on guidelines from public health officials at the community, provincial and federal level and provides a selection of practical tools and resources ensure that sport rolls out consistently and carefully, based on the best available information. The resources include everything a sporting organization would need to know for a safe restart, including: sport specific guidelines, risk assessment, risk management and liability, health and safety measures, how to set up a safe physical environment, sustainability and affordability, and communications protocols. The Ottawa Return to Play Roadmap is a living document and OSC will continue to develop it as more information becomes available. The Ottawa Return to Play Roadmap is one way of helping the Ottawa sport community to return to sport safely and responsibly. Ottawa is an active city with sport and recreation opportunities for people of all ages and abilities, and OSC, and our community partners believe that we need sport now, more than ever. 

OSC was pleased to be able to continue delivery of our concussion training, despite the pandemic, pivoting from an in-person course to one delivered virtually. The program was supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the Sport Information Resource Centre (SIRC) and Parachute Canada (the country’s leading injury prevention charity and national leader on the topic of concussions). To supplement the virtual training, we developed a 40-minute video, led by facilitator Jenn Bushell (Certified Athletic Therapist), which outlines the importance of concussion awareness, prevention and treatment across community sport. The video touches on how to recognize the signs and symptoms of a possible concussion, how to respond when there is a suspected concussion, and the Return-to-Sport Strategy approach for concussion management.  “People are becoming much more aware of concussions and as a result of that we believe that the field of play is becoming safer,” OSC Executive Director Marcia Morris says in the video. “But the reality is that concussion is a part of sport, so we want to ensure that if it happens this video and the contents within it are able to help somebody identify that at a much earlier time frame.” Check out the full video here.

Finally, in the fall OSC launched its initiative to ensure Safe Sport for All in the Ottawa community.  With the generous support of the Ontario Trillium Foundation, this initiative will develop an Ottawa Safe Sport Toolkit to help increase program safety and inclusiveness and ensure safe sport resources reach the community level. OSC believes everyone deserves to feel safe and respected while playing the sport they love, and this toolkit is our way of delivering standardized safe sport information and resources to the Ottawa community. We hope to have the toolkit ready to be piloted by Ottawa community sport organizations in 2021/2022.  If you are interested in learning more about the Safe Sport Toolkit, please contact us.

COVID-19 has posed many challenges this year. OSC is proud of the resiliency community sporting organizations have shown and their willingness to participate in projects that benefit the greater Ottawa sport sector. OSC remains committed to supporting community sport and we are looking forward to a new year, full of recovery and opportunity.