The commitment from Canadian Natural Resources has allowed the Bonnyville PONTIACS players to continue to reach impressionable youth in our Lakeland Schools through discussions involving the issues surrounding bullying as well as the importance of Respect and Making Proper Choices. From past experience and feedback received from the presentations provided from schools, the message delivered has had a positive lasting influence on young students, and that impact was significantly increased especially when the message was delivered by a positive role model.
The CNR PONTIACS: “Respect: It’s the Name of Our Game” Program dispenses an extremely important message, through conversation, to impressionable youth at a time in their lives when bullying is tremendously prevalent in our schools and in our society. It also allows the young leaders in our society to become influential role models to the youth in our community by ‘giving back’ to make a genuine difference beyond the confines of the ice arena.
With the generous support of Canadian Natural Resources the Bonnyville PONTIACS continued to be a part of the Lakeland School Respect Awareness Program in delivering important life skills messages surrounding the troubling issues of bullying. The presentations have allowed the Bonnyville PONTIACS players to generate a great deal of positive feedback with respect to leaving a lasting impression on the students within the Lakeland School community.
In the Lakeland area the Bonnyville PONTIACS have embraced the philosophy of understanding that it takes far more to be an athlete then to just be a great player on the ice. Not only do they excite people by the way they play on the ice our players embrace their role to be positive role models and contribute back to our community off the ice as well.
With the Bonnyville PONTIACS, we strongly encourage our players to learn and embrace teamwork which involves sacrifice for one another in pursuit of the ‘bigger picture’ in sports and in life. In a team setting, we encourage all of our players to choose and become solid role models and to get involved in helping others everyday – to learn and appreciate important character attributes such as accountability, pride and selflessness in pursuit of a 'larger perspective’ in life.
Because of the negative impact that bullying has on our society, the Bonnyville PONTIACS are excited to partner with CNR to play a key role in delivering important life skills to our youth.
The players on the PONTIACS deliver important messages to young students surrounding these concerns in an informal, intimate classroom setting that is applicable and relevant to the student’s comprehension and understanding of what is being delivered to them. Much of the positive feedback provided to our organization over the past three years was that our message is important and the players magnify the significance of the lesson to help the students “get it” and apply it.