ASCENT ASSIST
Volunteer gets a lift from Kia
Snow is in the forecast for the local mountains and that means Mark Schnurr’s Monday nights and weekends are about to get a lot busier.
For nearly three decades, the 44-year-old has volunteered as a Special Olympics alpine head coach, a position that entails weekly training sessions up Cypress and a number of competitions throughout the province over the course of the winter.
Unlike past years, however, Schnurr will be doing much of his driving in a new all-wheel-drive SUV thanks to the support of Kia Canada.
The automaker’s Special Olympics Mobility Program is a first-of-its-kind national transportation-based program designed to enable athletes, coaches, staff and volunteers to participate in Special Olympics competitions.
“Participating in sport is incredibly rewarding, but can also be a demanding undertaking for athletes and their families,” said Michael Kopke, director of marketing for Kia Canada.
“The travel required to attend training, games and tournaments can pose challenges for those without access to reliable transportation.”
That’s something Schnurr recognized early on in his involvement with Special Olympics. In fact, even before he could legally drive.
“When I was 14, I needed volunteer hours for high school. My younger brother has intellectual disabilities, so my mom said, ‘You’re pretty sporty. What about Special Olympics?’” Schnurr said, adding he was hooked after that first night of volunteering with a soccer program in Coquitlam.
“Then when I was almost 16 I was approached by a Special Olympics co-ordinator who said, ‘We’ve heard that you’re a skier and we’ve just lost our alpine ski head coach. Would you be interested?’
“I figured, ‘Sure, I’ll give it a try.’”
A few months later, when he got his driver’s licence, he started shuttling his athletes up to Cypress and back.
“From Day 1, I said to my athletes’ parents, ‘It’s a long way to take your kid up every Monday night for three or four hours. So why don’t I drive them?’”
That first year of head coaching turned into five years, which turned into 10 years, which has turned into nearly 30 now with just a two-year hiatus a few years ago to spend some time with his kids when they were young. In all that time he has been driving four athletes to ski training every Monday night every winter.
“So to have Kia involved now, that takes wear and tear off my vehicle, gas is looked after,” he said. “And to be able to have a Kia vehicle to take to a competition, say at Silver Star or Sun Peaks, that saves money for B.C. Special Olympics since we won’t be needing to rent transportation for those out-of-town competitions.
“And those savings can be turned into new programs. It’s going to be felt right up from the grassroots.”
That’s something echoed by the CEO of Special Olympics Ontario.
“For Special Olympics Chapters, transportation can be a challenge on a daily basis,” said Glenn MacDonell. “Getting our coaches, volunteers and teams to and from training and competitions incurs a massive cost and logistical undertaking for local chapters and their staff.”
The Mobility Program provides funding for the rental of Kia vehicles by way of local Enterprise Rent-a-Car locations with some 2,600 days’ worth of Kia vehicle rentals to be used by local Special Olympics chapters throughout every province and territory in Canada.