Amateur Sports
In North America, billet families offer room and board to junior ice hockey players (or Under-20 athletes from other sports, such as soccer). who leave home to join elite teams in other towns. Coaches are often involved with matching a player to a billet family. The objective of a billet family is to provide a "home away from home" for young players during the season. However, exaggerated fears over child safety in amateur sports in Canada drastically curtailed billeting practice. Many places do not billet, while other clubs through their provincial sports' bodies have instituted mandatory criminal record checks for all involved in amateur sports, including coaches, volunteers and anyone over eighteen years of age from the host family.
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Famous quotes containing the words amateur and/or sports:
“The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favourite; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)
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