BC earned the right to send two teams to represent Canada at the Pan American Youth Championships by winning the Gold Medal at both the Girls and Boys Canadian Under 16 National Championships this past summer.

The boys’ tournament is being held in Hermosillo, Mexico in February, 2010.  Learn more about  Canada's U17 Youth Pan Am Boys Team.

The girls in Montevideo, Uruguay in March 2010. Learn more about  Canada's U17 Youth Pan Am Girls Team.

Gold Medalists at the Youth Pan Am Championships qualify to compete at the first ever Youth Olympics. What an incredible opportunity.

The Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games aims to inspire youth around the world to embrace, embody and express the Olympic values of Excellence, Friendship and Respect. It will create a lasting sports, culture and education legacy for Singapore and youths from around the world, as well as enhance and elevate the sporting culture locally and regionally.

Quoted in the Vancouver Sun, Nobel Prize laureate Jose Manuel Ramos-Horta, the president of East Timor, had this to say at a recent Olympics meeting.

"I firmly believe that youth are the personification of the unique impact sport can deliver," Horta said Sunday.

Speaking to hundreds of delegates at the 13th Olympic Congress, Horta said he believes sport is "an effective bottom-up approach to peace and community."More than 17 per cent of the world's population is inactive and another 41 per cent don't exercise enough, he said. Unless more is done to encourage youth to get up and exercise, he said, there is a risk "that the virtues of sport become a cliché in a world plagued by war, famine, poverty, disease and the nefarious impact of climate change."

"If we want the Olympic movement to really live in society, it is time to take bolder steps. What better time than now?" Horta said.

"It is absolutely critical. The Youth Olympic Games is going to be a good vehicle to promote youth sport and ideals, and the fact that there is more to sport than just playing games," he said.