After living in Fort St. John for the past six months and covering a wide range of sports stories, I like to think that I’ve learned a lot about the community and the people who live in it.

From speed skating to curling, volleyball to hockey (and even rugby now), there aren’t many sports I haven’t written about or coaches I haven’t spoken to.

One thing that has been a big eye opener for me is the state of high school sports in the region and the struggle that young athletes have in this town, and many other remote centres, just to play the sport they love.

I realize now how much I’ve taken my own upbringing for granted and how spoiled I was when it came to athletics living on Vancouver Island. Sure I lived in a small town with a population of around 8,000 growing up, but that small town wasn’t far from other towns or other high schools. To get to Victoria or Vancouver it only took us three hours, so we had lots of competition within reach, which made us better players and gave us more opportunities to be seen by university scouts or just enjoy our teenage years like any kid should be able to do.

Here it’s clearly a different story, and it’s actually quite sad to me. I hate to see kids dropping out of sports because they can’t afford to pay over $1,000 just play soccer or volleyball, which are supposed to be two of the cheapest sports that exist. It’s terrible.

The travel costs and lack of competition for students due to Fort St. John’s geographical location are frankly astounding and quite unfair.

Something has to change.

I spoke to Craig Brownlee, vice principal at North Peace Secondary School, this week and he explained that there is a program called B.C. School Sports that’s does help fund remote schools to assist with travel expenses, but from what I understand they mean well, but the financial aid only covers a fraction of the cost. It barely makes a dent when a team has to pay $30,000 a season just to play other teams.

And to make things worse, extracurricular activities in schools are the first things attacked whenever there’s a budget cut by the Ministry of Education. That might not be so bad for a school in West Vancouver that has access to other facilities and options, but for one in Dawson Creek or Fort St. John it just makes it that much harder for our cities’ youth to play organized sports.

I’m no politician by any means (probably a good thing), but if I were I’d be pushing for increased funding to help with this problem; I’d request that the Ministry of Education look into how it divvies up its funding based on geographical settings and need, or suggest they put aside money for schools like North Peace Secondary School so that our students have a more equal playing field when it comes to organized sports.

Do they realize how much it costs the average team to travel to Prince George or Vancouver just once or twice a year, especially considering the terrible, almost immoral costs of flights out of Fort St. John? (For the love of God, West Jet, please come here). That’s not even counting trips to Grande Prairie.

I don’t think a lot of the head honchos at the MOE understand what it’s like up here for athletic students – I certainly didn’t until I moved here – so maybe someone needs to show them, open their eyes to see how hard it is for a regular kid to be on a team and advance athletically.

Being a volleyball player for seven years gave me some of the happiest times of my life and some of the best friends a person could have. The trips we took, the hotel stays, the ferry rides and tournaments are all things that made me a better person. I couldn’t imagine my parents telling me, “Katie you have to drop out of volleyball, we can’t afford it anymore.”

I would have been devastated and certainly wouldn’t be who I am today.

How is it fair to do that to almost an entire community?

We need to change this, not just for the sake of our city’s youth, but the city’s future.