Keeping kids off the streets and close to a place that gives them a positive and healthy lifestyle has not always been easy in northeast Calgary.

Numerous programs and outreach organizations have done good work to achieve successes for youth, but an inescapable reality for communities like Rundle is that there has been insufficient infrastructure to provide the space needed for success.

Space for basketball, one of the most in-demand sports by youth in the community, has been one of those pieces of infrastructure, that until recently, has been lacking.

Few courts exist in Rundle, and the only publicly maintained hoops—four of them—are located at the Rundle Community Association.

“Our students at lunchtime, you can easily see there’s 100–150 kids in their court at any given time, and in the evenings and weekends when I’m there, I’m just thrilled to see 20 or 30 kids seeming to be always on the court,” said Colin McCracken, principal of Dr. Gordon Higgins School.

In June, Dr. Gordon Higgins School opened a brand new basketball court to serve not only the school community, but the community at large, offering additional and newer court space to what has previously existed at the community association.

McCracken said that the effort to create a new court came about as the result of efforts by one of the teachers at the school, Andy Brar.

“Students actually approached Mr. Brar, who was our phys ed teacher at the time, and saying that they just wanted better hoops to play with. They didn’t have a grand dream of a new basketball court, but they were just talking about the ratty little hoops on the other side of our building,” he said.

“Then between Andy and another teacher and [former principal] Miss Hurst, they talked to parent council and they really realized that there’s just not another court of that nature or any court in the Rundle community that served that purpose.”

Though the court has been in use for a few months, the school put the final touches on it in July with a final surfacing and the school crest painted on.

Positive found in pandemic to help students succeed

Brar said that journey began during the Covid-19 pandemic: an abundance of time to work on a project, along with a supportive administration and parent council, netted a win for students.

“My good friend and colleague, Jace Richards, got together and we were like ‘the bell is ringing at 2:30, and we have all this time, what should we do?’ We can go home like everybody else is during Covid, butI think we can do something special here,” he said.

“So one thing led to another, and one night on his iPad we’re sketching out the drawing of what now is an actual project in our school. We brought it to our principal at the time, Mrs. Maureen Hurst, and she looked at it look back at us and said, ‘whatever you need, I’m willing to sign off on it.'”

The new basketball court, according to students and even alumni from the school, has been a slam dunk.

“The court brings everyone together. So when kids have nothing to do, they can kind of go out and play, and meet new friends, meet new people, and it’s a good way for the community go out and play together,” said Inder Bhangu, a former student at Dr. Gordon Higgins School.

“We were making the best of that small court that they had on the side there. So if we had that back in the day, I feel like it would have been much better for us. We would have more area to play.”

Part of giving students a reason to stay at school longer has tangential benefits beyond just letting them play more basketball, Brar said.

“Having safe spaces was absolutely imperative for me growing up. I mean, whether it was a leisure centre, or at the community called Temple not too far from here,—I grew up playing in the Mormon church, for example—these spaces really lent themselves for me to be here where I’m at,” he said.

Brar himself grew up in the community of Pineridge, just five minutes from Dr. Gordon Higgins and by a fortunate happenstance landed his first permanent teaching job at the school.

Dr. Gordon Higgins serves diverse communities from across northeast Calgary

Staying in one place near the school though has been more the exception than the norm more recently. The school serves Rundle within walking distance, but also students farther afield from Temple, Taradale, Homestead, and Cornerstone.

The demographics of the school are among the most diverse in the city, with McCracken saying that among the student body there are more than 40 different languages spoken from more than 40 different birth countries.

“Like the majority of northeast Calgary, our school is receiving sometimes up to three or four new students from other parts of the world every week. So it is a very complex, diverse neighbourhood. In that neighbourhood, we have a lot of families who are just really trying to figure out what it means to be living within Canadian culture and what and how they can contribute,” McCracken said.

“So, getting them involved in a fundraising effort for a basketball court or even finding a place for their kids to be when they’re not in school was hugely important for them.”

For students, the language of sport is also equally important.

“We have groups of students who really do not even speak the same language… and they use the language of sport to communicate. The development of friendships there is hugely important because, as you can imagine, when you have a lot of students from various countries and different languages come together in a school, they tend to congregate with what they know,” McCracken said.

“It’s great to have them actually interact in an unstructured way, meaning not like in a classroom. We see that all the time in the school, whether on the basketball court, or whether it’s on the backfield with soccer.”

When the court opened in June with a school-wide grand opening, McCracken said it left students, who would otherwise be disengaged during regular assemblies, enraptured.

“We had the entire student body around the court… [and] honestly, if this was a normal assembly in a school, we might not have a lot of focus on some some students, but they were they were glued to the court. They love the court,” he said.

“They make a direct link between the basketball courts and Mr. Brar, and they’re pumped and they know that Mr. Brar and the school has done this for them. They’re very gracious and very thankful.”

Brar himself was a little more humble about the project, saying that it was a team effort by teachers, the school community, fundraisers in the community, and support from the Government of Alberta through grant funding.

A team effort that leaves the Rundle community a better place, and a project that Brar hoped would serve to be a legacy for future generations of youth.

“We’re not going to be at Higgins forever, all of us. My good friend, Jace Richards, he had to move on to another school because he’s starting a young family. The principal, she got a great job at the CBE head office. These gentlemen, former alumni, they had to move on,” he said.

“So whether we like it or not one day, we’re all going to move away from Higgins. But leaving the place better than we found it is the most important thing.”