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New garage/sports venue at Hay River Ski Club serves as warm winter location for athletes

Chuck Lirette, the biathlon coach and trails supervisor with the Hay River Ski Club, stands in front of the biathlon wall in the club's new maintenance garage.
Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

For the Hay River Ski Club, its brand-new maintenance garage is much more than just a maintenance garage.

It is also a place where biathletes can go for indoor shooting practice when it gets too cold outside and also an integral part of improving the sports experience for biathlon, skiing and snowshoeing.

The garage was built over the summer and finished at about the end of September.

Chuck Lirette, the club's biathlon coach and trails and facilities supervisor, said the maintenance garage was built with indoor biathlon practice with air rifles in mind.

"When we designed it, it's kind of an unusual length. It's 42 feet," he said, noting the building contractor also thought that was a strange measurement. "And the reason is the regulation distance for shooting the air rifles is 10 metres, and 10 metres is about 36 feet," Lirette explained, noting that leaves six feet to place the mats at one end of the building where biathletes can shoot from the prone position.

"So now they're shooting at regulation distance indoors," he added.

An outdoor biathlon range measures 50 metres in length, and everything is five times smaller for indoor practice, resulting in the 10-metre range in the new maintenance garage.

"The shooting indoors or outdoors is identical for the kids," said Lirette. "Everything is scaled down. So it's the same sight picture. It's the same sized targets."

Another major adjustment is the biathletes don't use .22-calibre rifles inside, but high-quality pellet guns.

Lirette noted that the temperature cut-off is -20 C for when biathletes can no longer compete or practise outside, or -23 C with a wind chill.

That meant the new maintenance garage was used during a cold spell before Christmas.

"We were in here for a couple of weeks for the first time," said Lirette.

Nine-year-old Adele Russell, a first-year biathlete at the Hay River Ski Club, welcomed being able to practise in the new garage when the weather turned cold.

"It's a nice place to be in when it's really cold because it's nice and heated," she said.

Adele noted indoor shooting with an air gun is different than on the outdoor range with a rifle.

"It's still good practice," she said.

Prior to construction of the maintenance garage, biathletes would occasionally shoot indoors at the clubhouse, although Lirette noted that would only be at a distance of about five or six metres and not really a challenge.

In addition to biathlon, Lirette noted the new maintenance garage helps with other sports.

"It benefits our entire ski club in terms of having all of our equipment stored," he said. "We've been updating inventory and all of our equipment, sorting, cleaning, and able to do the same thing in the clubhouse. No longer do you find tools and equipment and everything in the clubhouse. The clubhouse is much more for the snowshoes and the skis and the waxing equipment for the ski club members to use."

In fact, Lirette describes the maintenance garage as a "game-changer" for the ski club in terms of maintaining trails, and controlling and sorting out equipment.

Prior to the maintenance garage being constructed, equipment like snowmobiles remained outside.

"And it would be very difficult to try to work on stuff when it's outdoors in the middle of winter," said Lirette. "So now we can bring stuff in."

The new maintenance garage is solely a ski club asset and is not used by the golf course.

Lirette noted that the Hay River Ski Club had a building reserve for the new garage.

In addition, it received a donation from the now-defunct Hay River Kiwanis Club and various kinds of support, such as donations and reduced prices, from a number of companies – Northern Comfort Construction, Mackenzie Electric, Stittco Utilities, MSS and Maskwa Engineering.

Lirette said that, without those donations and in-kind support, the ski club wouldn't have been in a financial position to proceed with construction.