‘We call ourselves the Olympics for regular people’: Sports festival brings thousands to U of G

The Good Games returned to the University of Guelph (U of G) for its third year Friday.

The free festival brought a variety of activities and sports across the campus, as well as thousands of pro and amateur athletes.

According to the founders of the event, it’s the largest sports festival of its kind in Canada.

“We were coming out of Covid but a lot of people had stopped playing sports. A lot of people were suffering,” The Good Games co-founder Mike Jean told CTV News. “[In the first year] we had about 234 athletes, which was very hard to get at the time. Now we have over 1500 athletes.”

Jean also said last year’s event had over 10,000 attendees, while this year’s looks like there could be more.

Tournaments were scheduled throughout the weekend, with prizes ready for the winners.

“Everyone involved in our tournaments will win medals. They win gold, silver [and] bronze. We call ourselves the Olympics for regular people,” said Jean.

Former pro-athletes attended and competed in the games as well.

Mike Plantinga, who was formerly with Team Canada for the Olympics, played in Saturday’s elite men’s beach volleyball competition.

“For us former athletes, it’s a nice place to come and compete again,” said Plantinga. “It feels like it did way back when. It’s fun to play on a big stage like this.”

This weekend’s festival also had activities for younger kids to enjoy, like an inflatable section, face painting and soccer.

“We came mainly for the squash tournament. Their dad is playing in it and we were surprised by all this amazing stuff. They’re having a blast,” said Lexie Grainger, who brought her two young kids for the first time. “It’s definitely more than I expected.”

Grainger said having these kinds of family-friendly festivals are important to have in communities.

“It exposes the kids to [a] variety of sports and activities and gets them moving. We’ve been outside all day and it’s just been great,” she said.