Biathlon Yukon has received grant money over the past year to accommodate the organization's growing numbers.

The membership jumped from 40 in 2008-2009 to 65 last season, and to cope, the club received nearly $80,000 in grant money to be invested into infrastructure.

That healthy sum has helped Biathlon Yukon undergo its largest infrastructure development since the club's inception in 1985.

"We needed that as our program got bigger, we need to be out there at least four days a week grooming trails

for our participants,” Biathlon Yukon president Keith Clarke said

He noted that the money came from the Community Development Fund and the City of Whitehorse, among others.

Clarke is hoping the numbers grow further when Biathlon Yukon hosts its open house and demonstration day this Sunday from 1 – 3 p.m. at the club, roughly five kilometres up Grey Mountain Road, where visitors can try their hand shooting a .22-caliber biathlon rifle under the guidance of experienced shooters.

"They'll definitely get to shoot, they'll get to try the rifles,” Clarke said.

The club's members, some of whom have experience at the Canada Winter Games and the Arctic Winter Games, will be on the line working with young and older participants alike.

Biathlon Yukon has been holding these open houses for a decade to rouse

interest, but has made a bigger push to promote the sport in the past two years.

"Biathlon is a pretty quiet sport,” Clarke said.

"We've got a pretty small club but we do lots of really cool things. At the same time,

it's not the glamour of some of the other sports, like cross-country skiing, for example. But it has a lot of things going for it.”

This season, young athletes new to the sport will be under the tutelage of the older group, who Clarke called great role models. The longevity of every sport begins at the grass-roots, Clarke added.

"Any sport body in town will tell you, it's the size of the bottom of the pyramid that will keep you living. If you got 30 members in the older age group and only five in the younger group, you're life expectancy is pretty short, so we're just really trying to develop our base.”