A new athletics competition coming to Guelph plans on attracting 1,000 over-30 athletes next year.
The Guelph Games: Canada's Masters Championships, will be held the last weekend in June.
It will feature seven sports: beach volleyball, soccer, athletics, basketball, slow pitch, ultimate Frisbee and pickleball (a combination of badminton, table tennis and tennis).
The University of Guelph will host the athletes and most of the events, with the beach volleyball taking place on a closed-off Carden Street in front of city hall.
There will be different categories of competitiveness.
Guelph's Gleam Media Inc., owned by Helen Stoumbos and Michael Brannagan, will be putting on the event.
"We've been throwing out the idea of bringing a sporting event to Guelph and we explored a lot of different options," said Stoumbos, options that included a women's soccer tournament or a cycling event.
"Then Rob Newman, who was the CEO of the American Masters event ... started the conversation a couple of years ago about doing this here and we started talking to the university and the city," Stoumbos said.
Stoumbos said there isn't a better city to host it in Canada and the ability to walk from one venue to another for the various sports and the university residences makes it a dream for athletes.
It's a big enough city with all the amenities but also intimate enough to enjoy the sense of community Guelph offers.
The games will be modelled after The Huntsman World Senior Games, an over-55 event which started in the 1980s in a small town in Utah with 280 athletes. Now they attract 11,000.
"What we're trying to do is create a fun atmosphere," Stoumbos said.
Various Guelph sports organizations will run their sport: soccer, volleyball, ultimate Frisbee, basketball. Evergreen Centre will run pickleball.
The games has its own web site at theguelphgames.com.
"It's about competiton, but it's more than that. It's about the experience," Stoumbos said.
The games aren't affiliated with Athletics Canada, which has its own Canadian Masters Athletics championships.
