Team’s second international trip in past seven years.

The University of the Fraser Valley Cascades women’s basketball team is traveling to Antigua to participated in a training camp and play several exhibition scrimmages against local post-secondary teams.  The Cascades will be joining Instructor Joanna Sheppard, an Instructor, in the UFV Kinesiology and Physical Education Department, as Joanna embarks on her third trip to the Caribbean to teach her course on “Champions for Health Promoting Schools.”  The trip is scheduled for the month of May, 2011 the women’s basketball team is going for approximately 10 days.

The women’s basketball team, under Head Coach Al Tuchscherer, traveled to China for 17 days, in the spring of 2004.  The Cascades visited Chegdu and Beijing on their China trip.

I’m excited about our relationship with KPE and the ‘Champions for Health’ program in Antigua.  I think opportunities like this are essential for developing complete student-athletes and I think this trip will be life changing for the student-athletes who are on the tour,” said Tuchscherer.

“We plan to train for the 2 weeks we are on the trip, scrimmage, but most importantly we will be getting into the island’s schools and working with Joanna and her team as they teach messages of respect, pride, and hope to the local children.   Messages that at times we take for granted here but are not always valued in other areas of the world.  We hope that as a Women’s basketball team we can really enhance the messages that Joanna is trying to instill in these communities.”

The Cascades finished the 2010-11 Canada West regular season, with a 12-12 record and went on to earn a berth in the Canada West “Final Four” by sweeping the University of Winnipeg, two straight and then earning a berth in the inaugural CIS Regional National tournament, where they lost to the University of Toronto, 78-69, at Fredericton, NB.

Champions for Health Promoting Schools (Instructor Joanna Sheppard) Champions for Health Promoting Schools

The program is a program that brings student teachers from Canada to schools in Antigua/Barbuda for a 4-week period. This is the 6th year in which students have worked side-by-side with local educators, they promote health education in innovative and effective ways that: a) enrich the quality of teaching and learning in classrooms; b) help students see opportunities to play leadership roles at school and in the community; c) relate school work to care for self, others, and the environment; d) integrate skills for reading, music, drama, storytelling, and art with health promotion; and e) build bridges between community health projects and school projects, for example, safe communities and environmental protection.

In its 3^rd year at UFV, a team of student teachers from the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia travel to the Caribbean to volunteer in classrooms. Their job is to: a) raise awareness of how education and health work together to improve the lives of young people; b) model new teaching methods that energize students’ imagination, curiosity, ambition and talent; c) involve community partners such as Red Cross, hospitals, planned parenthood, and the police in classroom activities.

The Antiguan students learn: a) to take better care of themselves and others; b) about the roles they can play as leaders, young citizens, c) helpers, and care providers; d) to apply what they are learning to decisions about health at home and in the community; e) to respect each other, take pride in their work, build knowledge and skills, develop creative solutions to today’s problems, and approach the future with optimism.

For further information on Champions for Health Promoting Schools contact Joanna Sheppard, 604-504-4771 x4165 joanna.sheppard@ufv.ca
For further information on women’s basketball trip contact Al Tuchscherer, 604-557-4076 Al.Tuchscherer@ufv.ca