Work is well underway for next NAIG

Though their event is still 19 months away, officials with the 2014 North American Indigenous Games (NAIG) are working full steam ahead.

Regina was awarded the 2014 NAIG in May of 2011. The host society has completed many recent steps as the games preparations heat up.

Regina officials have a goal in mind: to make this the best NAIG ever.

“We’re going to try,” said Glen Pratt, the host society’s chief executive officer. “We’ve adopted a theme called Raising The Bar. We want to make sure the games are done a little better each time.”

The 2014 NAIG now also has a logo, unveiled in early December. The logo design features a medicine wheel along with an athlete’s figure in motion.

The logo includes all Indigenous people in North America. An eagle feather at the top of the logo represents First Nations. A sash at the bottom of the logo represents the Metis. And the Inuit are represented by the ulu (traditional knife) in the right part of the logo.

Pratt, who was brought on board this past July, was the first staff member to be hired by the host society. Then an executive assistant and a sport and venue manager were added in September. That was followed by two more hirings in October; a sponsorship manager and a chief financial officer.

Four more staff members are expected to be added early in 2013.

All of the staff members work out of an office located in the Orr Centre in Regina. Officials will rent that space until the completion of the games.

Pratt said the majority of the NAIG preparations have to be done before the estimated 6,000 athletes, coaches and support staff show up to Regina in July 2014.

“The brunt of the work is done beforehand,” he said. “About 90 per cent of the work is about planning and 10 per cent is implementation.”

Officials from the host society received positive reviews when they presented a progress report to the NAIG Council at a meeting held in mid-November in Buffalo.

The next major meeting, a two-day affair, is expected to be staged in Regina this coming April. That event, which will share all updated Games’ info, will include representatives from all of the participating teams for the 2014 NAIG.

The games are expected to attract entrants from all 10 Canadian provinces, the three Canadian territories as well as 13 regions from across the United States.

Not all of the preparations, however, have gone entirely smoothly. Officials had a bit of an accommodations concern for a short time.

“One little glitch we had is that the public school board won’t allow us to house some of the athletes,” Pratt said.

About 2,000 athletes are expected to stay at the University of Regina. There is no concern with that arrangement deal. But the original plan was to also have as many as 4,000 athletes sleeping and being based out of six to eight public schools in the city.
Since that plan was nixed, officials are now planning to house some athletes at Regina-based Catholic schools.

Based on previous accommodation figures, Pratt estimates officials might only need about 2,000 beds at Catholic schools. That’s because about one-third of those who participate in the NAIG usually end up finding alternative accommodations.

“Some of them will stay in an RV,” Pratt said. “Some of them will camp. And some of them will stay in hotels. It’s up to each group how they do their accommodations.”

No new facilities will have to be built for the 2014 NAIG. Pratt views this as both a good thing and a bad thing.

“Everything is already in place,” he said. “But unfortunately there will be no legacy (as there will be no new facilities constructed).”
The NAIG were first held in 1990 in Edmonton. The games have been held six times since then but with no consistency in the number of years between competitions.

The gap between games has been as little as two years and as large as five (1997 and then again in 2002). But this mark will increase to six years when the Regina games are staged.

That’s because the last NAIG were held in 2008 in Cowichan Valley, B.C. The 2011 games were supposed to be held in Milwaukee but that competition was cancelled after the host society withdrew its bid to stage the event.

Since there wasn’t sufficient time for another city to step up and host the 2011 games, the NAIG Council scrapped the event and decided to look forward to 2014.