{"id":93,"date":"2012-09-17T19:03:05","date_gmt":"2012-09-18T03:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pucksprogram.ca\/blog\/?p=93"},"modified":"2015-11-27T19:07:41","modified_gmt":"2015-11-28T03:07:41","slug":"importance-of-team-relationships-key-message-from-lions-buono","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pucksprogram.ca\/blog\/importance-of-team-relationships-key-message-from-lions-buono\/","title":{"rendered":"Importance of team, relationships key message from Lions’ Buono"},"content":{"rendered":"

By MIRANDA GATHERCOLE<\/a>
\nSeptember 17, 2012 Langley Advance<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Wally\"<\/a>Beyond the intense competition, athletic training, concentration and determination, playing team sports is ultimately built on the foundation of establishing relationships and creating a community.<\/p>\n

This concept will be the main focus tomorrow night (Sept. 19) at the fourth annual Sports Heroes Dinner benefiting the PuCKS (Promoting Community through Kids in Sports) program.<\/p>\n

The gala, being held at the Langley Events Centre, is welcoming BC Lions general manager and vice-president Wally Buono and CEO and president Dennis Skulsky for an evening of discussion about the role of sports in strengthening individuals and ultimately a community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWally and Dennis are going to come and talk about the importance of team, their stories on being management and administrators of a high-level sports team, and how team and relationships are so key and foundational to that as well,\u201d said Connie Klimek, founder and executive director of PuCKS.<\/p>\n

PuCKS is a non-profit society that promotes kids either financially in-need, behaviourally at-risk, or recently re-settled in Canada to do well in school through the motivation of sports. All of the roughly 120 student members must participate in their special Lit-Fit program twice a week after school to do their homework, work on literacy projects, set goals and write success stories. Then as a reward, these kids have their sporting gear, registration, instruction and time playing completely covered by PuCKS.<\/p>\n

Keeping with the theme of relationships, this year\u2019s gala will also focus on the mentorship program between the students in the PuCKS program and volunteers from Trinity Western University and Kwantlen Polytechnic University.<\/p>\n

Students and mentors will share their stories on their experiences with each other through the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s extremely entertaining, but there\u2019s one side of it that is extremely moving. It\u2019s very real because you get the authentic stories from the kids,\u201d Klimek said.<\/p>\n

Ron Knight, owner of two McDonalds restaurants in Langley, will also make a presentation on the success of many students from PuCKS who are now working for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t even keep myself contained,\u201d Klimek said. \u201cYou just get so inspired, because you can really see it making a difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of these kids are refugees, so many have come from war torn countries with people shooting at them, they couldn\u2019t speak English three years ago, and now they\u2019re working at McDonalds. That\u2019s because of PuCKS. It\u2019s amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information on the gala and donation inquiries, visit www.pucksprogram.ca.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By MIRANDA GATHERCOLE September 17, 2012 Langley Advance Beyond the intense competition, athletic training, concentration and determination, playing team sports is ultimately built on the foundation of establishing relationships and creating a community. This concept will be the main focus … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":94,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3],"tags":[23,12,16,47,33,20,6,4,11,30,46],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-news","tag-community","tag-donation","tag-event","tag-football","tag-gala","tag-langley-advance","tag-pucks","tag-school","tag-sponsor","tag-sports","tag-wally-buono"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pucksprogram.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pucksprogram.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pucksprogram.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pucksprogram.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pucksprogram.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/pucksprogram.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95,"href":"http:\/\/pucksprogram.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/95"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pucksprogram.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pucksprogram.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pucksprogram.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pucksprogram.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}