An active coach for a number of teams on Walpole Island is looking for a more coordinated approach to sports on the First Nation reserve.
Lee Jacobs, who helps coach baseball, basketball and hockey, said having no sports and recreation department creates challenges year after year.
“There is a lack of communication, I don’t know how I can express it myself to Chief and council,” Jacobs said. “They are in charge of this Island basically. As of right now, there is no support system. We change from season to season. We will fundraise for baseball right now, but the second this is done, the hockey will start happening and it is a fiasco.”
Jacobs added: “If we have a place, not only baseball, but for every sport we could be training for football, hockey, soccer, and lacrosse. We have all the tools here, but nobody in place to make it happen.”
Jacobs says they currently have 130 kids on seven teams signed up for baseball from the ages of 5 to 18.
“I store equipment in my garage. I carried a generator and a pitching machine and a bag of equipment and that is the way I have to do things. It’s getting to the point where if my car breaks down, what do I do? There is a few of us that are really helping out to do this, but we shouldn’t have to do the things that we are doing,” he said.
Jacobs added: “There has to be a place where we can run our sports and whether that is the Sports Complex or whatever you want to call it these days… Bingo hall as most of us are calling it now. Basically what I would like to see is more input from our Chief and Council to help us get more equipment, the repairs of our diamonds.”
Jacobs said having a recreation department would help create some unity.
“We need to start working together and not start taking sides,” he said. “Month after month, if we had an organized recreation department, January we could have a fundraiser for ‘Little NHL’, February we could have a fundraiser for minor ball. Just a little more organization so we aren’t scrambling before we know it’s going to happen and then everyone just goes nuts.”
Jacobs said it is difficult to offer the kids sports with the bare minimum.
“Our stuff at the Island School, we need jerseys for the basketball teams, we need basketballs. I put a lot of time and heart into these kids and I just think they deserve more. They deserve better playing conditions, they deserve good equipment. The Island needs to know that.”
Jacobs said the playing fields need upgrades as well.
“When I was eight that green fence was still there. I’m 44 years old now. That backstop is 52 years old. I actually had to take a piece of fence and cover up the holes that were on it,” Jacobs said.
“To some people when you drive by you just see a regular baseball diamond, but when I come here, I have been playing here since I was a child and this is terrible. I was at the point in the beginning of the summer, I wasn’t going to offer baseball because of the unsafe conditions. I don’t know what to do or say to show Chief and council. You never see any of them here, that’s one of the biggest problems.”
Jacobs said participating in sports provides positive experiences for the kids on Walpole Island.
“I would like to show them that with hard work you can get what you want,” he said. “You can accomplish things.”
Jacobs added: “I think that with the right director we would have money. We could go find those grants but it’s every year. I am knocking on doors, making phone calls but eventually I just don’t want to go through that. I don’t want to paw and scratch every single year.”
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