1. Volunteer at a Casino
Casino volunteering is fun. It’s simple and very social. Basically, a bunch of friends get together and mess around with $200,000 in cash for an evening. And from that one evening the community association earns more than $70,000 which is later matched by the province and turned into $140,000.
Oakridge tennis players have shown strong support for Oakridge charity casinos by committing to get together and covering an entire shift themselves. The hockey people do the same thing. It’s fun, it’s social and it shows the board that tennis and hockey are prepared to help raise the money needed to expand and improve the facility.
2. Pay Your Fees.
When a few players neglect to pay their fees or try to skirt around the rules in order to save a few dollars, it hurts every squash player in our club. Believe it or not, every one of these instances gets back to the board. So man up, guys, and pay your fees. Show the board that squash players are the kind of people that they want to have around their facility.
3. Respect the Staff, Rules and Facility.
Every incidence of people disobeying staff, breaking rules or abusing the facility gets back to the board. When the guilty party is a hockey player, hockey looks bad. When it’s a lacrosse player, lacrosse looks bad. Once again, squash players can help themselves by showing our staff that squash players are good people to have around.
4. Make a Mess? Tell Somebody.
Every time somebody leaves a dirty diaper in the change room garbage can or a blood smear on the wall of the court or lets their kids run around and leave black marks all over the floor, it makes squash players look bad. But we look even worse when we don’t tell the staff about it. So please send an email or pick up the phone and let Sandy know when a mess needs to be cleaned up.
5. Say “Thank You”.
The Oakridge Community Centre is a community facility. Its mandate is to serve people of all ages. That’s why the Quick Fit is there. It might not be busy, but it serves senior ladies in a way that a squash court never will. So rather than complaining about the empty circuit gym or about the fact that the pre-school washrooms are reserved for children or about the fact that the water fountain has been turned off to prevent the spread of disease, try saying THANK YOU once in awhile.
Say thank you for spending $4,000 to repair the front wall of the squash court. Say thank you for spending $2,000 to repair the showers. Say thank you for putting the lockers back in the men’s change room. It doesn’t matter what you say thank you for, just take a minute to say it now and then.
REMEMEBER
Remember that Don Best, Dmitri Khitrov and I sit on the board representing racquet sports players at Oakridge. We have to answer for everything good and bad that squash and tennis players do. And it makes our job a heck of a lot easier when people are saying good things about squash and tennis players than when people are saying bad things.
[CALGARY, AB] 
