The volunteers who are working to organize the 2013 Alberta 55 Plus Summer Games will soon get a helping hand from Thorhild’s Marcie Mazurenko.
She has been hired as the Games manager, a full-time position that starts April 16 and finishes after the games next summer, from among 11 applicants.
“We short-listed and I interviewed three people,” board chair Gerry St. Pierre said.
“Based on a lot of criteria, we selected her. I think she’ll do a great job for us.”
Having filled the role of Games manager, that leaves just one vacant position on the board: director of protocol.
“We have a couple of people in mind for the protocol position,” he said. “There’s a lot of chair people working very extensively on that, so it’s not too serious a concern right now.”
Former protocol director Lorraine Garceau left the position for personal reasons.
Aside from that one vacancy, the board has successfully weathered several resignations by finding suitable replacements — including having St. Pierre step up when former board chair Henry Romanchuk stepped down.
“There’s always going to be some glitches, some little hiccups along the way; we’ve encountered those and we’ve dealt with them,” he said.
St. Pierre said while he though he might be a temporary replacement, he’s willing to stay on until a replacement can be found, if one is.
In the meantime, he said, he’s getting a lot of help from Facilities Co-ordinator Chuck Keller.
“He hasn’t officially accepted the position be-cause he wants to concen-trate on the facilities port-folio, but he’s been my right-hand guy right now,” he said. “He knows all the people in Westlock and we work very well to-gether.”
The effort to recruit vol-unteers will ramp up at avolunteer appreciationnight scheduled for April 25 in Barrhead, but St. Pierre said the bulk of the volunteers for the games won’t be recruited until next year. “It’s early yet to recruit most volun-teers, those who will beneeded in the month or two leading up to the games, but right now we probably need a few peo-ple to help with the port-folios,” he said.
One portfolio in need of a bit of help is communi-cations and safety, specif-ically with organizing the security end of things.
“I am not doing too well in getting people in place,” portfolio director Leslie Penny told the board at the March 22 meeting.
Overall, however, St. Pierre said he’s confident everything will come to-gether and run smoothly.
“With most portfolios we’re on target or ahead of the game with a lot of things that are alreadydone, and we’re still con-tinuing at the same pace.”
• With files from Marcus Day, Barrhead Leader.
