Youth soccer trying to hang on - Winnipeg Free Press

Indoor venues bulge at seams and one pitch soon to be lost

Sat Dec 17 2005

By Chris Cariou



"It's close to being a disaster," youth soccer director Harry Harwood said yesterday.
The Winnipeg soccer community's long-dreamed-of proposal for an indoor-outdoor soccer complex sits filed away at city hall for 60 more days. And the clock keeps ticking toward the day in mid-February when Harwood will lose access to the Golf Dome.

"If we ever get an influx of teams, which I'm sure we would get if we really advertised and went after the registrations, we couldn't cope," he said. "We just couldn't cope. There's a definite need for facilities south of the Assiniboine and in the eastern part of the city, in St. Boniface/St. Vital. There's nothing out there, they're in desperate need."

Harwood pointed to a letter from a girl in St. Boniface/St. Vital.

Her complaint, like so many others the executive director of the Winnipeg Youth Soccer Association receives, is about having to drive all the way to Seven Oaks to play a soccer game and then getting home late, with school the next day. It's nothing new, Harwood says -- all a symptom of a city with a severe lack of indoor soccer facilities. His Winnipeg Youth Soccer Association has 5,000 players and just five -- soon to be four because the Golf Dome on Wilkes Avenue has previoius booking arrangements -- indoor venues.

Mayor Sam Katz has told the soccer community that while he agrees indoor soccer facilities are needed and will be built, he's checking out cheaper alternatives such as a domed structure like one in Ottawa (the Superdome) that could be built for $5 million and run through a city/private partnership.

As a result, the Winnipeg Soccer Federation's proposal for a $13-million facility for south Winnipeg (likely on Sterling Lyon Parkway) that would include a bricks-and-mortar building with four pitches, dressing rooms, lounge, restaurant and other amenities -- plus two outdoor fields, one of them artificial -- has been put off again by city council until mid-January.

The loss of the Golf Dome in mid-February -- it's been the site for 10 games a week this season -- will leave just the Skylight in East St. Paul, indoor fields at Gateway and Seven Oaks and Court Sports as WYSA venues for the rest of the season. Harwood says he'll be able to get all those games in.

Two other facilities -- the Winnipeg Winter Club's dome and the Cover-All out in Headingley -- dropped out of the picture when the WWC's bubble collapsed due to snow last winter and Cover-All locked its doors. Harwood said Cover-All offered to sell its building to WYSA but it's asking too much at $1 million.

The Soccer Spectrum on Waverley is the only other indoor facility in Winnipeg but it's used exclusively by adult teams. Harwood has managed to get all his games in by reducing games to two 25-minute halves and a 10-minute window for half-time and changeover. So what used to be 75 minutes has been cut to 60 for each game.

The season will end as planned on the Friday before spring break. In the new year, WYSA will have official timekeepers who will help referees check for ID cads and game sheets in the hope of easing a problem with games running late. But with about 177 games a week at five facilities - four venues after mid-February -- it's no easy task.

Some of the existing facilities don't offer the greatest conditions. The new Skylight, which has no boards and can only be used by WYSA's elite teams, hosts 40 games per week. Seven Oaks, probably the best place to play, hosts 48 games a week, the Gateway 42 and Court Sports 37.

"The Sky Light is not the best but when you're desperate...beggars can't be choosers, right?," Harwood chuckled. "It's a new facility, it's only a single shell compared to Cover-All being a double shell, so there is problems with condensation. But we're beggars. And being beggars, we have to use these places." chris.cariou@freepress.mb.ca