Pemberton's Red Devils Alumni Association (RDAA) is helping buck a provincial trend. While other areas' programs are struggling to address the costs associated with rural school sports, the RDAA is helping fund an expansion of Pemberton Secondary School’s (PSS) sport offerings.
The association’s ability to subsidize school sports all comes down to one night; the Shaker—an annual fundraiser held, this year, on Saturday, April 5 at 8 p.m. The one-night event includes a silent auction, bar and dancing to live music put on by the famed Big Love Band. The fundraiser has been the association's go-to event since it was founded in 2016.
"Come to the high school gym and relive your high school dance time, but be able to drink," joked Sheena Fraser. She's the mother of both a recent and an upcoming graduate of PSS. Both of her daughters are involved in the school's sports.
The Shaker isn’t just for PSS alumni, Fraser notes; it’s put on by the association, but it’s a community event. They’re welcoming people from across the Valley.
“You don't need to be the parent of a student or graduate of PSS to come out and support, because this is about the whole community,” she said. “If you've got kids in elementary school, they're going to be here, too.
“We’re thinking about the longevity of the programs that are currently offered.”
Founded in 2016, the RDAA works to reduce the burden of tournament entry fees on students. Once upon a time, those fees were covered by pop machines in the halls of Pemberton Secondary School. But when the machines were phased out under the B.C. Healthy Schools initiative, the pop funds disappeared.
“My concern was, will my child have teammates when it becomes an elitist thing where some families can afford it and some families can't?” said Krista Walden, teacher and athletic director at PSS, and one of the founders of the Alumni Association. “So we wanted to just make sure that we had a system in place where it remained affordable for everybody.”
Enter, the Day of the Devil—the Shaker’s precursor. Through the fundraiser, the RDAA has been able to reduce the cost barriers that make families less likely to engage with school sports.
“Because of our rural nature, most of what we do in the sports teams is overnight tournament trips, so there's a significant amount of travel and accommodation costs," said Walden.
“But then, if you’re attending a tournament, there’s also an entry fee, which, when all of a sudden they’re dividing a $500 entry fee among 10 kids, an $80 trip becomes a $130 trip. And so it was just, ‘this is going to become unaffordable.’"
It's not just a problem in Pemberton. A 2024 report from the B.C. Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture, and Sport noted “sport organizations’ rising real estate, legal, staff and insurance costs are being passed on to participants through higher registration fees and equipment costs. Further, costs associated with travel for practices, games, and tournaments have increased due to higher fuel and accommodation costs.”
The Red Devils Alumni Association works to cover all tournament entry fees equally (between $10,000 and $12,000 a year), subsidize trips over $100 dollars for students, and purchase uniforms and equipment.
“I really think that without this fundraiser, our sports teams would not exist the way they do today,” said Fraser.
The RDAA naturally also involves alumni—former students who come back to coach the sports they once learned at PSS. That coaching experience, combined with the subsidizing of trips, has helped PSS’ sports programs grow.
Case in point, Walden said PSS’ track team had four students on it during its first season, two years back. This season, they had about 60. Overall, Walden estimated two-thirds of PSS’ 300-student population are involved in school sports—be it soccer, basketball, volleyball, track and field or mountain biking.
Fraser is relieved to see that expansion in programming—growth she attributes to Walden's work as athletic director. Because of Pemberton’s smaller population, there just aren’t the same number of resources on hand, she said. More often than not, the school is young Pembertonians’ main foray into sports.
“This is the future of our kids. You don't know where they're going to land," she said. "And we've got kids now playing volleyball down in the Lower Mainland. We've got kids skiing at provincials. We've got a whole slew of kids who are on different mountain bike teams and doing well outside of school, and it's exciting.”
Tickets to attend the Shaker and help fund PSS' sports program cost $38.61, and are available for purchase on Eventbrite. For updates on the event, including information on the items up for bid, check out the Alumni Association's Facebook page.
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