Athletes who are preparing to represent the province of Guanacaste in any national or international competition may use the sports facilities of the University of Costa Rica (UCR) at the headquarters of that province at no cost.
This was announced, last Monday, by the entity through a press release after last Friday that the Liberia triathlon youth team, which is preparing to compete in the National Games qualifiers, trains in rivers to which the monthly fee to make use of the pool in the UCR went from ¢ 4,000 to ¢ 24,000.
“The headquarters of Guanacaste of the University of Costa Rica agreed on the afternoon of this March 18, 2019 not to charge for the use of sports facilities to athletes who are in the process of training for powers of representation of the province at a national or international level”, the text says.
“The Director of the Headquarters, Edgar Solano Muñoz clarified that the institution will continue to provide its sports facilities to the athletes that are part of the official representations of the canton of Liberia, headed by the Cantonal Sports and Recreation Committee, even counting on its all the expenditures demanded by the maintenance thereof”, the document adds.
The increase
The Cantonal Sports and Recreation Committee (CCDR) of Liberia received a letter from the Sports Facilities Commission of the university center on February 27th, mentioning that it had decided to increase the quota paid by athlete.
“For us it is totally surprising because when we met with them the idea was to keep the conditions in the same way they had been, but we went from paying almost ¢ 70 thousand a month to almost ¢ 500 thousand, and it is a sum that the Committee does not have the capacity to face it”, the president of the CCDR of Liberia, Eddy Álvarez, said last Friday.
However, despite the request for meetings by the Committee to know why the increase had not received any response by the campus. Unable to pay the fee and the athletes want to continue training, team coach Magdalena Chacón proposed to do it in rivers. Both they and the parents accepted.
According to the UCR, the only requirement for the loan of the facilities is respect for the activities of the University. For its part, the statement does not explain why at the time it was decided to increase the cost of the fee or if it was an error.
