Athletes from Team Yukon enter the Crystal Centre during Sunday's opening ceremony. (Chantal Dubuc/CBC)

Some athletes at this week's Arctic Winter Games in Grande Prairie, Alta., are criticizing organizers for keeping them in a room, without any meals, for two hours at the opening ceremony.

More than 2,000 young athletes and their coaches, from nine teams across the circumpolar world, have converged upon the northern Alberta city to compete in 21 indoor and outdoor sporting events as part of the week-long games.

The games officially began Sunday evening with a spectacular opening ceremony that some athletes say was long and tiring for them.

"It was pretty long," Twyla Etchinelle, a 19-year-old indoor soccer player from Tulita, N.W.T., told CBC News. "I had to wait. It was exhausting."

The games include teams from Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Yukon, northern Alberta, northern Quebec, Alaska, Greenland, Scandinavia and Russia.

'Negative experience'

Athletes say they had to wait in a large gymnasium, with no chairs or food, for two hours before the athletes' parade began. This was contrary to the care and comfort the young athletes' parents expected games organizers to provide, they say.

"It's a really negative experience for us," said Betsy Mawdsley, the Northwest Territories' snowshoe biathlon coach. "You get hauled away at around 6:30, and then you're not going to get into the ceremonies until about 8:30.

"Essentially, you're locked in this closed room because they don't want, you know, the uniforms on display, they don't want the athletes running around. There's no real food or drinks. And for athletes who race in the morning, and for coaches and things like that, it's really kind of a pain."

Race next morning

Yukon snowshoe racers Logan Roots and Kieran Halliday said they began racing at 8 a.m. Monday with no supper and only a few hours of sleep the night before.

"Standing out there, that was a long time," said Roots, 16, who won a silver medal in the five-kilometre cross-country junior male category on Monday. "The dinner place closed really early, and then there was a super-long line."

"We came back at the school at, like, 11," added Halliday, 14, who won gold in the 2½-kilometre cross-country juvenile male category. "I was hungry so I waited in line for, like, an hour for food. Seriously."

Roots and Halliday said the Arctic Winter Games are supposed to promote healthy lifestyles among northern youth.

They are asking organizers to ensure the closing ceremonies, slated for Saturday evening, reflect that philosophy.