Get Kids to join the Crusade!!!

This blog comes from the back to school experience we are going through with our children. They are 12 and 15 and already we are receiving the forms home for school field trips. One is for a trip to a local provincial park and one for Ottawa.

It occurred to me that over all the years of my children in school we have never got a form saying they were taking a field trip to the racetrack.

Does that sound weird - a school trip to the racetrack?

Well it might if it was during live racing but what about during qualifiers?

We must get the kids involved just like all the other sports do. The popularity of the Leafs, Blue Jays, Raptors, and Golf etc. is built from their childhood of playing that particular sport.

We need to arrange for school trips every week on Qualifying days. Put the kids in the barns, the paddock, and the grandstand to watch the qualifiers. Get them to sit on a bike with a horse even if it just walked around by a trainer. Using the qualifying day’s takes away all the concern about wagering and delivers more of a sport feels to Harness Racing and further we know that kids love horses so they would talk about their experience with others.

If we had a strong school trip program we could get 100’s of kids to the track annually not just a few that get a chance to be involved in the horse camp during the summer.

This will give them more of the participant experience they get from other sports and will have them asking Mom and Dad to take them to the track.

Other thoughts on making racing an activity for the young:

- The programs should have pictures of the drivers every night with a story about them so these young kids get to know who they are cheering for.

- At age 13 or so we should have a volunteer program for kids to work for a trainer in a barn doing a grooms job. My daughter began doing it this year with our trainer on Saturday mornings and now wants to go the track every night to see her barns horses’ race.

- Go around the track each night and pick kids to go in the starter’s car. They did that at Kawartha for my kids and they loved it, once again something to remember about their visit to the track.

Make them love the sport and the betting will come with their age.

Join the crusade take a new fan to the races with you tonight!