CYO has been cut to its core by COVID -19
Camps, sports, outdoor education all being affected by shutdown rules, executive director says
The staff has been whittled to five. The summer camps — including Marydale, which is well-known for giving opportunities to children with disabilities — are quiet. The athletic programs are completely shut down. And the financial reserves are being drained at a rate of about $1,500 a day.
These are tough days for the Catholic Youth Organization.
“It’s definitely not ideal, whatsoever,” says executive director John Spatazzo.
Of course, the time of COVID-19 is tough for everyone. But this has wide-reaching implications, even if you’re not Catholic or don’t directly use their services.
Each year, the bulk of the CYO’s revenue comes from camp fees. As many as 300 kids a week attend Camp Marydale for day camp and just under 200 a week sleep over at Camp Brébeuf.
With overnight camps banned due to the pandemic and changes being required of day camps, much of that money is gone. Right now, all of it is gone. Yet, the organization still has to pay for insurance, taxes, utilities, maintenance, the alarm system and other costs.
“It is $45,000 a month to stay closed,” Spatazzo says.
To stay afloat, he laid off 80 per cent of the staff a few weeks back. All programming has been stopped, including outdoor education. Even so, it’s got only enough cash to last about three months. Which sounds rather ominous.
It sure does, you’re saying. But, again, my kids don’t go to the camps. So why does this matter to me?
For decades, the HamiltonWentworth Catholic District School Board has hired the CYO to run much of its elementary school athletics. Flag football, basketball, volleyball, cross country and track are all looked after by the organization rather than the board itself. The CYO hires the officials and does the scheduling and operates the tournaments. And, by all accounts, it does it very well.
“What we do for a nickel and how we stretch it is more than the school board can do,” Spatazzo explains.
Pat Daly is the board chair. Does he agree it’s cheaper and more efficient?
“For sure,” he says.
This doesn’t just affect Catholic elementary students. Many of these cross country and track meets and tournaments draw schools from around the city and region. Public schools, too. Some draw as many as 12,000 students over a period of days. But now, with questions looming about what school will look like in the fall and whether there will be sports — universities have already cancelled and, while high schools have not yet been given direction, many coaches expect no games — the CYO could even be losing that contract.
And if that happens? “That is the nail in the coffin,” Spatazzo says.
That might be a slight overstatement. He’s not positive yet what the long-term result of that could be. Could the CYO go bankrupt? He doesn’t know. He’ll be talking to the bishop in a few weeks to get the lay of the financial land.
Even if things shut down completely for a time, he expects the organization would rebound at some point. The question is, what would it look like once that happened? And could it even host its annual fundraising dinner at which the Golden Horseshoe Athlete of the Year is announced that brings in close to $100,000 a year to help regain some of that footing?
“Will we be allowed to gather 700 or 800 people in a room?” he asks.
Daly says, if things got really dire, the school board would step in and run elementary athletics. Sports are not going to die. But it’s a big, big job and would cost more than it currently does. With everyone looking for every available dollar, that becomes a challenge.
In an attempt to slow the bleeding, the CYO is running a campaign through its website to raise money to prevent a worst-case scenario. The target is $250,000 each quarter of the year. A million dollars overall to try to keep the organization intact.
Eight days in, a little less than $20,000 has been donated.