“There’s a lot of kids that are not as fortunate, a lot of kids at my school in particular so I just thought it’s a really great way to help out and allow them to play, too,” he told Lethbridge News Now.

2019 marks the second year for the Bottles4Boulet campaign. Last year, Morrell said they raised $2,500 and got 11 kids set up to play sports.

“The official cheque was twenty-five hundred but a few more donations came after, so it got very close to three-thousand (dollars) and he did that all by himself,” said Ryker’s father, Ross Morrell.

This year, the campaign has already shown tremendous growth with many local schools on board with the bottle collecting initiative.

The schools involved so far include Wilson Middle School, Chinook High School and Catholic Central High School, as well as Ryker’s Winston Churchill High School.

“It’s looking really promising for this year that it’s going to do extremely well,” Ross said.

INSPIRED BY A LOCAL HERO

Ryker said he spoke with Toby Boulet, a teacher at Winston Churchill High School and the father of Logan Boulet. The Lethbridge hockey player passed away in the April 2018 Humboldt Broncos bus crash.

Through Toby, he was able to start the campaign in partnership with the KidSport Logan Boulet Fund.

Ryker said sports have helped him learn about leadership skills and make new friends.

His father noted that the team environment of sports also helped inspire the project.

This year, the goal is to raise at least $10,000 and help 50 kids or more.

COMMUNITY RECOGNITION

Ryker is set to receive the Servus Credit Union Outstanding Sport Citizen Award from the Lethbridge Sports Council on April 8, for the work he did through the campaign last year.

“(It feels) really good,” Ryker said.

His father added that, “(Ryker) was very excited when they called him because he didn’t even know that he got nominated. His principal at his school actually nominated him.”

Ryker said he hopes to keep the Bottles4Boulet campaign going all the way through his high school years. Once he graduates, he hopes the initiative can keep rolling in the community.

“I’m looking to pass it on to some other kid in grade nine or grade eight that’s passionate about it and wants to help out. That way, somebody else can take over,” he said.

Ross is asking other schools in the region to get involved and noted many businesses have come on board even before the campaign’s official start of May 6.

“We’ve actually gotten quite a few donations so far this year…like TD on Mayor Magrath Drive donated five-hundred dollars, Big Steel Box donated (many) containers. The original plan was to put one on the west, one on the north, and one on the south but they said ‘hey, if you end up needing ten containers we’ll put ten containers out there’ and that’s where schools can drop them (bottles) off and then they’ll pick up and take them to the bottle depot,” he said.

“The response has been fantastic, it’s growing so big that it could end up being a full-time job for him!”

The campaign officially runs from May 6 to May 11, but people can donate bottles already. Volunteers can also get on board.

For details on that, visit bottles4boulet.org. Anyone interested in helping can also email rykermorrell@icloud.com or call 587-220-6719.