Outreach is an important mandate for our team, and this event was inspired and made possible thanks to a Nordiq Canada Women's committee team building grant.  The goal of Ski Through School is to keep athletes involved in sport after high school.  Our women's team planned and led an event for local U16/U18 athletes that involved team building activities including a strength session and social to provide information about staying involved in skiing after high school.  

The transition from high school to post-secondary education has many potential challenges and is a critical period for dropping out of sport. This is also a time when young women leave home and are on their own to establish lifelong habits that have a profound influence on their physical and mental health. 

Ski Through School promotes the many ways that being part of a sports team can enhance the University experience. Beyond being fun, being on a sports team allows students to meet students outside of their program and often results in physical, psychological, academic, and social benefits. 

We believe that our event had an impact on all participants, and that our promotion helped extend the reach of our message far and wide.  

Our Ski Through School event at uOttawa on March 1 was a huge success!  The event highlighted the many benefits of combining education with sport and emphasized the various paths that young women can take to stay involved in sport. 

uOttawa Gee-Gees athletes and U18/U16 athletes from Nakkertok Nordic, Chelsea Nordic, and Kanata Nordic started the session with a campus tour jog, followed by a  1-hour at the uOttawa High Performance Center with uOttawa Gee-Gees trainers. This was followed by a social with team building activities, information about the benefits of staying in sport, University/College ski programs, and fun trivia about women in sport and skiing through school (ski jeopardy!). We hope that all athletes came away inspired to stay involved in sport. 

Thanks to the Nordiq Canada Women’s Committee for creating the opportunity, and to the following supporters who made the event fantastic: uOttawa Gee-Gees Sports Services, Apogee Sports, The Cyclery, and Xact Nutrition. Thanks also to Elodie Drew who took some amazing photos of the planning and the event! 

The pictures and videos below capture the event from the planning and promotion stages through the actual event.  To see more pictures and videos have a look at our photo and video album. 

Our uOttawa Gee-Gees women's team started planning Ski Through School back in January.  Brainstorming ideas about promotion, food, activities, and other things that U18 and U16 athletes would like.  

We wanted to reach beyond our local clubs and promote Ski Through School far and wide, to create awareness of the benefits of skiing through school.  Here are just some of the posts we created for the event. 

Promotion included Instragram posts and stories (including "a day in the life" of University students on our team for three programs popular with our athletes - Health Sciences, Biology, Human Kinetics -  and a variety of other social media posts.  You can check out some of our Instagram Story highlights here.

Athlete Promo - Ski Through School

Coach Promo - Ski Through School

Athlete Registration Form - Ski Through School

Ski Through School * Skier et Etudier - Letter to Participants

Summary and Thank You to Sponsors

Summary and Thank You to Participants

Ski Through School Evaluation

We greeted athletes and went for a campus jog, then headed to the uOttawa High Performance Center. We love our strength training sessions and wanted to share the experience with younger athletes. All in all we have 24 participants (11 U18/U16; and 11 uOttawa athletes/coaches). 

Our social and team building activities included a "What Program Am I" Quiz, Ski Through School Jeopardy, the many paths women can take to stay involved and active in sport, and earnest discussion about staying involved in sport after high school. 

Overall we had 16/22 respondents (50% u18/u16 and 50% uOttawa) to the evaluation questionnaire. We believe we could have achieved a better response rate with more reminders, but this all happened at the beginning of the pandemic in March, so everyone's priorities were elsewhere! The evaluation questionnaire is here.  Overall it looks like the event was well received and increased knowledge/likelihood of athletes continue to ski through school. 

All in all this was a terrific team building experience for our female athletes, which also benefited local U18 and U16 athletes and hopefully will improve retention as these women see more options after High School. 

Recruitment Challenges. We were surprised how much effort went into recruiting participants for this 2-hour event, given the large number of young female athletes in the region (multiple personal emails to club coaches, a social media promotion campaign, and promotion through our local organizations (National Capital District; XC Ski Ontario). Feedback was that this is a very busy time of year for athletes schools wise and that there are few free weekends during race season (although there were no races scheduled this weekend, many athletes were catching up with schoolwork). 

However - this challenge meant that we doubled down on our promotion, potentially reaching a large audience with our athlete retention message.  

Potential Solutions

• We recommend getting in touch with club coaches early and have them put this on the athlete's plan

• Get in touch with clubs early on and try to get this information in club newsletters

• Consider running such an event in the offseason or summer when athletes have fewer commitments

We addressed this issue in our evaluation questionnaire: