Community giving plays a big part in sports

By Cody Wall

A common theme among sports teams is the importance of giving back to the community.

While the main point of sports is entertainment, it also serves as a way to give back to the community. Whether it be through events, donations or simple forms of awareness, sports provide an important aspect of community growth.

Andy Dowling is the general manager for the Kingsville Kings hockey team. While, the team is small and does not have the market to make a huge impact, he still believes it is important to be involved within the community no matter the size of the team.

“Without the support of the community, we cannot develop or improve our program, 80 per cent of being a hockey player is the talent. The other 20 per cent is how the individual is as a human being,” said Dowling. “ Exposing the young players to charities and community groups improves their humanity skills and shows them what trials and tribulations others have.”

Most professional teams have multiple donations and charities. The Toronto Maple Leafs have connections to the military. For every home game the team provides tickets for and honours veterans through their charity Leafs Troops. They also hold annual Armed Forces Nights, where they host hundreds of soldiers and have meet and greets after the game with players.

Currently, every Canadian NHL team has a charity fund set up to give back to the community in some way, with each foundation giving back a different percentage. Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment currently ranks first among Canadian teams in terms of percentage of each dollar actually going to the charity with 79 cents. The Calgary Flames rank at the bottom of the list with 30 cents going to the charity. This made the team fall under some heavy criticism this year when their 2016-17 season funds were released. In the 2016-17 season, the Flames raised 4.1 million for charity. However, only $1.2 million actually ended up going towards the charity and the rest of the money was used to fund events such as celebrity golf and poker tournaments.  

Local teams such as the Windsor Spitfires and the Windsor Express basketball team of the National Basketball League of Canada also contribute and give back to their community. Just this month the Spitfires held a special night to honor Remembrance Day and a superhero night to support the Fight Like Mason Foundation on Nov. 24. The Express helped promote the recently built Forest Glade Community Centre Sports Courts earlier this year. This is something the Express’ CEO Dartis Willis said is very important both for the team and the community because it helps grow the sport. Currently, Ontario makes up more than 80 per cent of the current Canadian NBA players.

“We saw the value. We understand we have a duty as a pro sports team, to grow basketball in Canada, and if you’re going to grow basketball in Canada you have to start from the roots,” said Willis.

Three local organizations helped fund the courts: Your TV Windsor, the Forest Glade Optimist Club, and local Canadian Tire stores. They made up 12.5 per cent, or $25,000, of the $200,000 it cost to build the courts.

Perhaps the biggest crowd-funded sports-related event is the community support around the Humboldt Broncos bus crash which raised a total of $15,185,700 in 12 days. This means on average each day $1,265,475 was raised, with some of the biggest donations coming from NHL teams such as the Toronto Maple Leafs and Vancouver Canucks, as well as NHL players like Brendan Gallagher and Dion Phaneuf.

While the repercussions of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash are still being felt to this day, it was a anexample of how sports communities can rally with one another to overcome even the greatest of tragedies.