By Nolan Kowal, Sport Performance Specialist
As you may or may not know, Sport Manitoba is going through a major rebranding, so I thought now would be a good time to update everyone in the community on what exactly is happening inside our building these days.
We’ve really seen our organization grow since 1996. What started primarily as an administration and funding body for amateur sport has quietly evolved into something much greater than that.
We now own and operate a sport medicine clinic, a fitness centre, and a high performance centre where some of our elite athletes train. The Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame is also located in our building along with Coaching Manitoba and our courts.
The opening of the Canada Games Sport for Life Centre—the legacy building of the 2017 Canada Summer Games in Winnipeg—certainly allowed us to expand and create more of a community and activity-based environment.
But as time wore on, we became aware that there was some confusion as to what exactly Sport Manitoba does. Therefore, we decided to rebrand our organization and attribute all of the services we offer to the overarching title of Sport Manitoba.
Beginning later this summer, we’ll now refer to our fitness centre as the Sport Manitoba Fitness Centre, our performance centre will be Sport Manitoba Performance, our clinic will be called the Sport Manitoba Clinic, and our coaching services will be Sport Manitoba Coaching.
We feel this is the best way to simplify the different facets of our organization, and our hope is that you will have a better understanding of what we offer.
We are also in the process of updating our signage and improving the wayfinding inside our building, and each sub-brand of our organization (fitness, performance, clinic, coaching) will have its own colour within our new identity system. We hope this will help you better connect our programs and services and navigate our building.
It’ll be worth checking out once the paint dries and everything is finished up. We’ll keep you posted on that!
The funding and administration work we do for amateur sport in our building will continue, and the 65+ Provincial Sport Organizations along with our sport partners that operate here at 145 Pacific Avenue will continue to have a strong presence.
But ultimately, our mission has always been about increasing participation in sport and developing athletes. We want every Manitoba athlete to feel as prepared as any athlete in the country when they put on our province’s colours to compete.
When the Canada Games Sport for Life Centre opened, it was fully embraced by the community, and we’re confident that these changes will be embraced as well, while at the same time giving our organization a fresh new look.
