Carleton Athletics has chosen Sept. 8 to officially reopen its fitness centre. The gym, like many other campus services, closed in March in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several campus fitness facilities reopened over the summer months, including the pool on Aug. 17 and the Ice House on July 17.
The director of finance and operations at Carleton Athletics, Yolana Junco-Pascual, said the fitness centre is included in Ontario’s Stage 3 reopening. She said Carleton Athletics developed their reopening protocol to comply with Ontario health regulations.
She added that some protocols that the fitness centre will be implementing include a booking system because of a new lower capacity of 50, as compared to 150 pre-pandemic. Students will be able to book a time slot to use equipment online so that the gym is never too crowded.
Some equipment will be blocked off to allow adequate physical distancing, Junco-Pascual added. These bookings will be for 90-minute blocks, to allow equipment sanitizing and “deep cleans” between bookings. There will also be disinfectant and paper towels available for wiping down equipment during bookings. At night, “fogging” (whole-room disinfection) will take place to sanitize equipment thoroughly. Junco-Pascual said that fitness centre staff will be trained to enforce rules and clean properly.
Masks are required to enter the building, and hand sanitizer and sanitizer spray bottles are all in place.
Carleton Athletics’ vice president Jennifer Brenning said Carleton Athletics is following industry guidelines and medical expertise to develop protocols mandated by the provincial government.
“We have the best experts and advice on being able to do this the right way,” Junco-Pascual said. “We put safety and the health of the students first before anything else.”
That is a sentiment shared by Kwesi Loney, coach for Carleton men’s soccer. Loney said the pandemic presents lots of challenges as the soccer team starts again at Carleton.
“With every decision that we make, there are so many different moving parts,” he said.
Loney said that right now, the soccer team will not be using indoor facilities in September. Moving further into the fall, the team will look at other resources that could be used.
“Our main focus is to try to get some type of normalcy back to our student athletes,” Loney said.
In absence of full access to the internal gym, Loney said that gym-type workouts can be incorporated into the team’s outdoor training.
“Our student athletes’ health is our main focal point in this action,” Loney added.
Many members of the Carleton University Dragon Boat Club will also be forgoing gym visits. Co-captain Kimberly Rose Goh said she and her fellow co-captains are not pushing people to use the fitness centre if they are content with home workouts.
“We want all our members to succeed, and to be comfortable and happy,” Goh said.
Before the pandemic, Carleton’s dragon boat team was in intense training for both national and world dragon-boating championships, Goh said.
“The break from that serious training, I think it’s partly why everyone is happy working out outdoors and not having to go to the gym,” Goh said. “It’s no longer the pressure of physical performance, it’s now just we work out for fun.”
Goh said that though she will be returning to the Carleton gym in September to use the equipment, she is not going to force her team to do something that could potentially increase their risk of contracting COVID-19.
“Even a lot of my friends who were gym rats like me before, a lot of them have got used to not going to the gym,” Goh added. “Ultimately, I think it’s based on your personal relationship with the gym.”
Featured image by Isabel Harder.
