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By CHAT News Today

Health guidelines remain

Family Leisure Centre moving forward in relaunch Sept. 1, regular pricing to return

Aug 25, 2020 | 4:41 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Hatters will have more chances to get physical at the Family Leisure Centre beginning next week.

The facility will move into the next stage of its safe relaunch on Sept. 1.

“Pickleball which is very popular will now be kicked back into our facility. We’re looking at opening five courts at a time, we’re starting mini-leagues which fall under the guidelines, we’ll have registration of those programs online for people to join us,” says Natalie Sauer recreation manager of the city’s parks and recreation department.

Basketball and badminton will also be in the gym, tennis and golf lessons in the fieldhouse and more swimming lessons and fitness classes will be offered beginning next week.

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“We’re actually increasing more lessons to extend into Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon. We go from 16 fitness classes a week in the summer to 30 starting the fall so a lot more options for people to join as well as the aquafit classes,” Sauer adds. “September we’ll be just starting to add new programming in and then as October, November, December come in everything ramps up further and that a very normal thing in our rec world is that, of course, the fall is starting just starting people coming in and then we move forward more.”

As well, Sauer says managers have been working with Alberta Health Services to ensure all health and safety guidelines are in place and feasible for the increased programming, including plenty of signage ad a COVID monitor, who Sauer says has been key.

“Someone that will check you in so we make sure we know who’s here so that we can do that contact tracing as well as so we know how many people are in the building,” she said. “And because we’re registering program we’ll continue to know only 40 in the pool at once or one person per lane and eight people in a small fitness class. We still stay with the numbers we have due to COVID, we just have more classes to offer.”

James Will, general manager of parks & recreation, says staying active is important to so many people in the community and offering more options will be available as fall turns to winter.

With the return of activities at the Family Leisure Centre also comes the return of regular pricing.

The city introduced a discounted Stay Safe Pass when the FLC first re-opened in July, after being shut down in March due to COVID-19.

Those who already had passes before the shut down have been taken care of, says Sauer.

“If you were an Annual Passholder and has a pass for a year, we would have stopped that March 16 and put that on hold. So from March 16 to Aug. 31 we will now extend that time period to your annual pass. Anybody who was a Continuous Passholder, we also had a freeze so we will kick those back in the 1st and 15^th of the month which is our process. If you were a 31 Day Passholder beforehand we would have pro-rated you already and a credit is sitting on your account ready for you to use for kicking your pass in as well.”

Visit medicinehat.ca for a full list of monthly pass prices and daily rates.