McMaster welcomes 800 students from across Canada to Kin Games
This year's Kinesiology Games, hosted by McMaster, feature competitions in a number of a non-traditional sports including quidditch, made popular by the Harry Potter series of novels.
McMaster’s main campus and downtown Hamilton will see an influx of nearly 800 particularly fit young people this week when the student-organized Kinesiology Games welcomes competitors from 33 universities across Canada.
The annual Kin Games is coming to McMaster for the first time in its 14-year history, under the leadership of Kinesiology student Corey Helie-Masters, an enthusiastic and ambitious multi-tasker working with a team of 300 volunteers who are helping to guide visitors and co-ordinate the games themselves.
“I am so excited that this is going to happen and put so much into Hamilton,” says Helie-Masters, who has been working on the event for two years.
The events take place Thursday to Saturday, with competitors arriving in Hamilton Wednesday and leaving Sunday. The bulk of out-of-towners will stay downtown at the Sheraton and Homewood Suites hotels, visiting the Hamilton Convention Centre Friday for a grad school and employment trade show called Kin Crawl, and coming to campus for competitions and academic speakers.
Participating schools are sending teams that typically include 24 members.
With a budget of $200,000 and another $300,000 in expected delegate spending on travel and accommodations, the event is an academic and social event that also brings some economic impact.
The Kin Games themselves combine athletic and academic challenges. The athletic events, which this year include such improbable sports as inner-tube water polo, belly baseball and quidditch, are designed specifically not to resemble established sports, so they test competitors’ “adaptive athleticism” – levelling the playing field for everyone, regardless of their expertise.
On the academic side, the competitors will take part in quiz-style events that test knowledge of such topics as exercise physiology, human growth and biomechanics.
Helie-Masters, who came to McMaster from Burk’s Falls, Ontario, is enthusiastic about introducing other students not just to his school, but to Hamilton, and has organized a social night in Hess Village Thursday.
More information about the Kinesiology Games is available here.
