Blyth Lions, Firefighters Association to work together on new sports pad at Lions Park

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

The Blyth Lions Club has voted to pursue an ambitious plan of creating a new sports pad in partnership with the Blyth Firefighters Association at Blyth Lions Park that will facilitate the playing of basketball, road hockey and pickleball at a cost of about $30,000.

 

The club voted to move forward late last month, but received a huge boost last week from the Blyth Firefighters Association, which has pledged $10,000 to the new sports pad. The contribution is the largest that Association President Robb Finch can remember in his lengthy history with the association.

 

Members of both the association and the Lions Club gathered for dinner at the Blyth Fire Hall last week to formalize the donation and further discuss the project.

 

Finch, speaking with The Citizen, said the association has long made donations throughout the community for the betterment of Blyth and its people. However, when members heard about the Lions Club’s project, they wanted to make an impact that they hadn’t made before.

 

The vast majority of the money made by the association, which is then redistributed throughout the community, Finch said, is made in September during the annual reunion of the Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association, when the association hosts breakfasts for hundreds of reunion-goers and community members at the fire hall.

 

Victoria Sider of the Lions Club, who was involved with a special sub-committee charged with sketching out the details of a new sports pad at the park, said she and the club were just thrilled when they were informed that the association wanted to step up and make such a generous contribution. 

 

The importance of recreation in the village is central to the work of the club when it comes to its maintenance of the park. As official recreation opportunities dry up, grassroots opportunities like the park and the Blyth Kids Club become more and more important to young families in the village, she said.

 

The total cost of the project will be $30,000, she said. The club will now continue to raise funds for the betterment of the park to fund the purchase of new equipment for the sports pad. She hopes it will get going next month, though she acknowledged that, with the way the weather has been, staying cold well into May, there’s a strong possibility that it may not go ahead until the fall. It’s important to the club, she said, to avoid construction during the park’s busy summer months.

 

The pad itself will be located in the northwest corner of the park, at the former location of a baseball diamond that hasn’t been used in many years. It will run north to south, adjacent to Gypsy Lane. Its dimensions will be 80 feet long by 40 feet wide.
The initial $30,000 investment, Sider said, is just for the concrete pad itself. Basketball nets, fencing, a pickleball net and any other accoutrements will be added by the club as time and resources allow. For now, the first priority is to get the pad poured and set and the rest will follow.

 

DAE Concrete Creations Inc. has been awarded the work for the pad and Lavis will be hauling the concrete for the pad.
To acknowledge the collaborative nature of the project, there will be two benches installed along the sports pad, one recognizing the club itself and the other recognizing the association.

 

As for the Lions Club’s funds, much of the money it has to invest in the project right now is from the success of its dirt bike draw, which took place at the end of last year.

 

Sider also made note of the fact that the sports pad is just one step in the club’s lengthy park improvement plan. The first phase of this work began last year.

 

The club built a new fence along the village’s main street at the east end of the park, which included some tree removal. Dwight Chalmers designed and built the archway in the middle of the fence and Lions members Jim Johnston and Gary Courtney worked on the fence for the club and Backroad Custom Steel and Signs created the Lions logo, which is in the middle of the archway.

 

The club also commissioned a mural for its clubhouse with the help of a donation from the Goderich Deckhands hockey team. Abi Bos from Erratic Art World was the artist and she worked over the course of three days to finish it in time for the Lions Club’s annual steak barbecue last year.

 

Looking ahead, Sider said the club will be fundraising to continue to build up the pad with equipment and other additions and she hopes that the pad itself will be conducive to further, more creative fundraising, like three-on-three hockey tournaments and other activities that will help bring more money into the park.