Darrell Greer
Northern News Services

Coral Harbour (Oct 02/00) - Taking the time to properly promote a sport or organization is a main ingredient towards its success and continued growth.

That's the advice of Coral Harbour wrestling coach and Sakku school teacher Bruce McKitrick -- and he should know.

The Coral wrestling program earned itself three of the top awards at the recent Sport Nunavut awards.

Coral wrestlers earned the Nunavut Team of the Year award, star grappler Joseph Nakoolak was named Male Athlete of the Year and McKitrick himself was named Coach of the Year.

McKitrick says the first benefit of working to properly promote your sport or organization is that it attracts participants.

"If you take the time to get your information into the newspaper, it gets printed and more kids become aware of your efforts and sign up for the sport or activity," says McKitrick.

"The more you work to publicize your activity, the better your chances are to keep it growing."

McKitrick doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the amount of work proper promotion requires.

"More than half of my work with wrestling comes from things I have to do away from the mat, rather than on the mat itself.

"There's all the phone calls and arrangements I have to do with competitions and travelling, talking to the media, Sport Nunavut and everybody else involved."

McKitrick says proper promotion can also aid in funding proposals, giving a sport, group or organization something tangible to include in their proposal.

He says activities tend to become more popular if they're visible in local media and people are hearing of their successes.

"The more you promote your sport or organization, the more attention gets drawn to it and, with a little success, it seems to snowball after that and keeps picking up speed.

"It's a lot of work, but anything that helps get the kids involved with positive activities and gets the community's support is worth the effort."