There’s no question that the Huntsville Soccer Club needs more space. The club serves approximately 800 players and its primary practice and play fields at McCulley-Robertson Recreation Park are a hive of activity every soccer season.
All of the club’s house leagues – U4, U6, U8, U10, U12, U15 and Adult Introductory, Intermediate and Experienced teams – practice and play at McCulley-Roberston, as do the Rep league teams. The field at Conroy Park is used for Rep league play, particularly for the older age groups.
Now, with a new Long Term Player Development (LTPD) program implemented by the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) and the Ontario Soccer Association (OSA), the club doesn’t have enough room to provide all of the programming it is required to.
One of the challenges the Huntsville Soccer Club finds itself in is we often run out of available field space at the times that we need to use the field space.
Huntsville Soccer Club President Dave Caplan.
Caplan and club vice-president Haydn Kirby were at the September 28 General Committee meeting to present a proposal that would increase their field space.
Why more field space is needed
In the LTPD model, players alternate between game play and skill development. Training sessions include the use of stations – smaller fields on which activities are set up for the players to rotate through, learning a new skill at each.
The Huntsville Soccer Club had fully implemented the LTPD method as of the 2016 season, but to do so it had to make some of its training and playing areas smaller than the recommended size. The club created 16 12m x 12m training areas on the North soccer field for its U4, U6 and U8 programs – each station is used by six to 10 player and one to two coaches at a time. The recommended size of these areas ranges from 20m x 20m to 25m x 25m.
The club also has three 40m x 26m fields used for its U10, house league and rep programs; the recommended size of these fields is 55m x 36m.
Where the new fields would go
The Huntsville Soccer Club has identified a 90m x 90m area across the road from the south soccer fields at McCulley-Roberston that would allow it to create the 16 20m x 20m grids required for the LTPD training program. Doing so would free up space on the north field so that it could expand the U10 fields to their recommended size.
Currently, a portion of the Town’s frisbee golf course is located where the proposed field would be built. The Town’s Executive Director of Community Services Kari Lambe said that the course could potentially moved during the redevelopment of McCulley-Robertson.
The club did consider the field below Lions Lookout but it was deemed an inadequate solution.
“When I started with the club in 2005, the Lookout field was probably the most beautiful soccer field I’d seen in my entire life,” said Caplan. “(Now) the conditions are not so good for soccer.”
In response to a question from Deputy Mayor Karin Terziano regarding whether it would be cheaper to develop a new field versus repurposing the Lookout field, Kirby said: “They severed the hydro and water (at the Lookout field), and the field is in rough shape. The other issue is parking and accessibility to the field – we’re talking about little kids. The washroom building is in disarray and is falling apart. I think cost-wise it would probably be about the same. And this club has a history of getting things done fairly inexpensively.”
Caplan also expressed the club’s desire to keep most its programs in one location for parents with children in different soccer programs.
What’s next?
The Huntsville Soccer Club will be investigating the requirements and costs for creating the new field and will be seeking approval from the Town of Huntsville, owner of the property in question, to move forward.
Committee passed a motion to direct staff to investigate the usage and capacity of the current soccer fields at McCulley-Robertson.
Update: the original post incorrectly identified Dave Caplan as club vice-president and Haydn Kirby as president. These errors have been corrected.
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