Carla Clapton (back row far right) and her business partner Nicole Tjepkema, the owners of Rings of Fire Ringette School, have been operating the Osoyoos Ringette School in partnership with the Town of Osoyoos for more than two decades. The Osoyoos Ringette School is the longest-running summer ringette camp in Canada, but it appears that the 2017 camp that just wrapped up will be the last. Clapton said financial considerations are at the heart of their decision to not return to Osoyoos next summer. This photo was taken featuring all of the participants and instructors who participated in the 2017 camp that wrapped up 10 days ago. (Keith Lacey photo)
It appears the longest-running summer ringette camp in Canada will not be returning to Osoyoos.
The Osoyoos Ringette School just completed its 33rd consecutive year at the Sun Bowl Arena and the two ladies who have organized and operated the camp for the past 25 years – Carla Clapton and Nicole Tjepkema – don’t plan on returning for the summer of 2018.
Clapton and Tjepkema are the co-owners of the Rings of Fire Ringette School in the Lower Mainland and have been operating ringette camps for young players for many years and have been coming to Osoyoos for the annual summer camp for most of their lives.
“It looks like this will be our last summer school,” said Clapton, who first came to Osoyoos as a young ringette player and then graduated to becoming an instructor before taking over as owners and operators of the program.
Like many things in life, the decision to pull the plug has come down to dollars and cents, said Clapton.
The Town of Osoyoos community services department has hired Clapton and her company to run the summer school in August and has subsidized Clapton and her staff by paying for travel, accommodation and food for the instructors.
In return, the school would take proceeds from participants and pay the town for ice rental fees and other ancillary costs, said Clapton.
With the number of young girls signing up for the summer camp decreasing each of the past few years – there were just under 40 participants this summer – the town is no longer willing to subsidize the program, said Clapton.
And she and her business partners aren’t willing to raise the price of attending the camp to levels that would make it unaffordable for the young participants and their families, she said.
“It’s simply not manageable to run the program at the price levels we’re charging (roughly $350 per player for five full days of instruction and ice time) without the support of the town,” she said. “Nicole and I talked about it and we’re just not willing to increase the price to participate to the level where it would be unaffordable, so we made the decision that this will be our last camp.”
Clapton said the Town of Osoyoos has been a fantastic business partner over the years and she understands why they are no longer willing to subsidize her program, but she did say it’s unfortunate the longest running summer ringette camp in the country won’t continue.
“This ringette camp has so much tradition … we’ve had many of our instructors who have been coming here since they were little girls just starting out in ringette,” she said. “It’s going to be sad to not come back to Osoyoos next summer for the first time in so long I can’t remember, but life goes on.”
At its peak in the 1990s, more than 70 players would register for the one-week camp, but those numbers have dropped almost in half the past two years said Clapton.
“We used to get 10 or 12 families from Alberta every year and for whatever reason, we’re not getting any Alberta girls anymore,” she said.
Running the ringette school was always the focus, but instructors and the participants also got to enjoy all Osoyoos has to offer during their stay, she said.
“Being able to come and enjoy the sunshine and hot weather and the camping was half the fun,” she said. “Osoyoos is just a great place to be in the summertime and that’s a big reason the camp has been such a success for all these years.”
While she and Tjepkema won’t be running the ringette camp next year, Clapton hinted she would be more than willing to assist another operator who might want to come in and offer the same service.
“I’m hopeful there might be a group of younger ladies who might want to step in and run their own camp,” she said. “I would be more than willing to help them in any way I can.”
Clapton said she will personally continue visiting Osoyoos even though the ringette camp is coming to an end.
“I just love it here,” she said. “I couldn’t see myself not coming to Osoyoos at least once every summer.”
Gerald Davis, the town’s director of community services, said late last week that he hasn’t formally heard anything from Clapton about future ringette camps, he admitted he did hear the rumours this would be the last one.
Davis admitted it wasn’t financially viable for the town to subsidize the ringette camp any longer.
“The number of players participating has dropped each year over the past five years,” he said.
There were also very few, if any, local players participating in the camp, he said.
“There really hasn’t been any call in the community for a ringette program,” he said. “We didn’t mind subsidizing this camp in the past because they were bringing a lot of people into the community and those families were spending a lot of money, but the numbers kept going down.’
Davis is confident there won’t be any problem with other user groups wanting to run programs out of the Sun Bowl Arena in the summer months.
Once arena maintenance is completed in early July there is always strong demand by user groups for ice time in Osoyoos and he has no doubt there will be users wanting to grab the ice time that will be available if the ringette camp doesn’t return, he said.
Davis said he’s proud of the fact a small town like Osoyoos hosted the longest-running ringette summer camp in all of Canada.
“It’s quite remarkable that we’ve had such great success with this ringette school when Osoyoos has never really been a hotbed for ringette,” he said. “We’ve had a great run for 33 years.”
KEITH LACEY
Osoyoos Times
