Reply To: Articles – Hockey Coaching ABCs

June 19, 2011 at 3:23 pm #4096

Participant

I know this is a hockey site, but I believe the hockey model in Canada could use some improvements. Soccer is the #1 sport in our country and growing much more rapidly. Hockey has plateaued and registration numbers are down. Wake up hockey!

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In a hockey city, soccer scores

In our hockey-obsessed nation, soccer has quietly become the most played sport in the country. In Calgary, soccer participation has been growing so quickly that it's becoming a victim of its own success.

By Sean Myers, Calgary Herald June 19, 2011

When Lia Lousier and husband Michael Hicks decided to start their two boys Torin, 6, and Rylan, 4, in organized sports, they considered hockey, but hesitated.

Torin is autistic and Rylan is still young. And they worried hockey might be too expensive and time consuming. Both parents played soccer as kids, and thought it might be a good first exposure to team sports.

Nobody batted an eye at signing both boys up. Today, Torin is playing alongside his brother on the roster of the under-six Orange Tigers in the community league run by McKnight Sport Council.

"The coaches have been great with him, running up and down the field with him," she said of Torin. And for Rylan? "He really enjoys it and I think for him it's something he'll carry through for a number of years."

The couple is among the growing number of Calgarians becoming deeply involved in soccer. In a nation obsessed with hockey -enough to spark a riot in Vancouver -soccer has quietly become the most played sport in Canada. Fuelled by its accessibility, low cost and universality, and given new dimensions by multicultural immigration from soccer-loving nations, Canada has become a participatory soccer nation.

In Calgary, the pace of soccer's growth over the past decade has been breakneck and, despite some growing pains, the sport's popularity will likely keep climbing.

Nationwide, soccer now far surpasses hockey or any other sport for participation. Last summer, 847,616 soccer players of all ages and abilities registered to play in a league, according to the Canadian Soccer Association, compared to 572,411 Canadians registered to play hockey in the 2010-11 season, from the youngest tykes through minor associations, postsecondary and senior and recreation leagues.

During the recent boom in Calgary, soccer registration increased by as much as 20 per cent annually. Now it's going up at about the same rate as population growth.

Today, about 15,000 kids are signed up for minor soccer and another 15,000 in community soccer leagues. In total, an estimated 109,000 Calgarians take part in soccer as players, coaches and referees, including house leagues, high school teams and various independent organizations such as the city's Chinese Soccer Association.

At the same time, minor hockey registration has plateaued at about 13,000 over the past four years, according to Hockey Canada.

Part of that growth has come from new Canadians, who bring with them a love of soccer from all over the world.

Organizers with the Calgary Minor Soccer Association, however, are still reaching out to new immigrants and Muslims who are underepresented in Calgary's soccer leagues.

One of those initiatives is enlisting a multilingual Muslim family in Taravista to help break down barriers

"Overall in the minorities, soccer is loved. Regardless of where they come from, they truly do love the sport," said Khalil Karbani, vice-president of the Genesis Centre, an athletic facility currently under construction in the northeast.

"They play soccer on the street and on any bit of green space they can find up here."

But he and his wife Noshy, and their four soccer-playing children, said families have shied away from registering their kids to play community and minor league soccer, especially the girls. They attribute that reluctance to an incident in 2007 at the Calgary Soccer Centre involving a girl who was told by a referee she couldn't play unless she took off her hijab head covering. She refused and the aftermath gained widespread media attention.

The Alberta Soccer Association later ruled that girls could wear sport hijabs as long as they could come off easily for safety reasons.

FIFA rules also allow long pants and long sleeve tops to be worn for religious reasons, but the Karbanis say that isn't widely known in the immigrant and Muslim communities.

The Karbani family plans to visit schools to spread the word through the communities in the northeast encouraging kids to sign up for teams and soccer clinics.

"We're trying to gradually get them to get back into it and say, 'yes you can wear a hijab,' " said Karbani. "You can wear your lose clothes and still be able to play football, get healthy, get fit and enjoy yourself."

Daryl Leinweber, executive director of the Calgary Minor Soccer Association, said he actively sought help to reach out to families of visible minorities who aren't signing up to play.

"If you can find people that speak the language and that can identify with the culture to become a support of your sport, that's key," said Leinweber. "We found that with this family. They're terrific ambassadors for us.

"Our objective is to find ways for kids to be able to play not find ways to stop them. So we make every effort we can to be inclusive to find a way so every child can play."

Soccer in the city has also become a victim of its own success. A lack of playing fields is limiting growth.

"Soccer has participation well beyond any other sport," said Leinweber. "If we had the facilities we'd see even more of this growth within the sport."

In 2008, Sport Calgary (formerly the Calgary Sport Council) put out a 10-year strategic plan for developing new athletic facilities. It identified a serious deficit in the number of facilities compared to participants.

Since then, $300 million in provincial funding has poured into the city, largely for hockey arena projects. The money also supported two outdoor artificial turfs at Shouldice Park, and about $70 million is going toward the Genesis Centre which will include three new indoor fields and two outdoor soccer pitches.

The city lost three indoor fields when the bubble collapsed at the Calgary Soccer Centre last year, but those are to be replaced under a new permanent structure to be built at the site.

"We're making some strides to catch up," said Tim Bjornson, executive director of Sport Calgary. "When you look at the top 13 sport activities, the majority are summer activities.

"Things are happening but our investment in sport and recreation infrastructure has to be on a continual basis or we'll never catch up."

A major difference between the demographics of soccer and hockey also has an impact on facilities, said Bjornson.

There are far more adults playing hockey who require higher quality facilities, while 80 per cent of soccer players are youth and the majority of those are under 14, he said.

"They don't need as high-level facilities," said Bjornson. "A lot of the growth in soccer has been in that community soccer range with under-eight, under-six and under-four. They just need a field that is safe to play on, they don't need artificial turf. You have to ask what level of facility do you really need to participate.

"But soccer has been growing, there's no doubt about that, and there are demands there."

Calgary Minor Soccer has placed an emphasis on improving coaching at the earliest ages to improve the skill level of young players. Better skilled players stay in the game longer said Leinweber, meaning better facilities are going to be needed in the short and long term.

For parents, the biggest and most obvious advantage soccer has over hockey is financial. It can cost a minimum of $1,000 for a set of hockey equipment that will have to be replaced several times as the player grows.

Soccer requires a pair of shin pads and cleats.

"We don't consider hockey for the cost," said Kristen Dawson, who has a seven-year-old daughter and five-year-old son playing on the same under-six team in the McKnight community league.

"It's too expensive -the equipment, ice time, and then there's all the volunteer time, it's so involved.

"This is something you can pick up. It's within the community, we enjoy it. They do it twice a week, they get to run, it's great."

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
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