Amateur Sport Coalition

Excellent article written about the need for Canadian Team Sports to rally together and promote the importance of team sports in Canada. The article can be found at http://www.canada.com/sports/Coalition+rallies+Canadian+team+sports/2342226/story.html

Under the Own the Podium program in Canada team sports are suffering at the hands of individual team sports because as Dr. Roger Jackson notes "at best a team sport (like Basketball) can win two medals at an Olympics whereas a sport like swimming can win a plethora of medals."

However, team sports are at the essence of sport development and are at the heart of the long term athlete development model in Canada. In a survey of high performance athletes 90% said they participated in team sports in the developmental stages of their careers and that 73 per cent of the athletes surveyed indicated that participation in team sport was important to their development as an athlete. Despite the fact that Canada hasn't won an Olympic medal in a team sport at a Summer Olympiad since 1936 team sports play an integral role in the development of our national team athletes.

Isn't it time that Canadian sport officials recognized the importance of team sports in Canada and started funding them appropriately. This writer thinks so...