C.C.S.A. U11 Girls Terriers web site 2002:03:29

Important message about Fields from Doug MacDonell, President C.C.S.A.

Hello everyone

We are at a crossroads with soccer in Coquitlam. As individuals in Coquitlam City Soccer, we have to decide what’s important to us. The Strategic Planning Group identified immediate and long range goals for our Club to obtain. Everything we’re working towards is designed to make our Club stronger, innovative and desirable to belong to. A core of hard working volunteers is enough to bring most of our plans to fruition. However, there is one glaring need we have that is threatening to not only stall our progress, it is threatening to keep us from ever achieving our goals. Fields.

I learned today that that any type of complex at the Winslow site will likely never happen. At most, all we can hope for at that site is one artificial turf field with no facilities.

I’ve been deeply involved with the City and the School District for the past several months over field issues and I feel I have a pretty good insight into how the system works (or fails to work). We are in danger of being shunted aside with regard to fields and what is allocated to us. There is very little green space available in Central Coquitlam that is owned by the City. We won’t get any more access to Mundy Park than we presently have. Baseball and Softball have that park sewn up. Mackin Park is unable to be developed for anything other than baseball due to the bog it sits on. Blue Mountain Park is dedicated to baseball. Hartley is too small.

That leaves the schools. I don’t know of any fields other than perhaps Miller – Banting that could accommodate more than one field. Of course, going into partnership with the Schools brings up a whole new set of issues over availability. We’d be sharing practice and game times with School sports teams.

I have no problems with other sports doing well for their organizations with fields and facilities. It’s the kids who generally benefit. I do have a problem when I see the largest sports club in Coquitlam, one that boasts as many girls as boys registered and playing, left high and dry without proper fields and facilities. That is the fault of our elected officials and their staff.

What are we going to do about it? I’d like to think that in a Club the size of ours there are members who are outraged at the way we’re treated by the City. I have to be honest about this. Very little will be done by a handful of CCSA executive trying to get the City to pay attention. We need the general membership to get involved in making noise about the way our children are being treated by the elected officials of Coquitlam. There are people in our Club with connections to City staff and officials who make decisions. We have to get them to use their ties and influence. This is an election year so the politicians are listening. So far CCSA isn’t saying much.

Please don’t think the next person will do something so you don’t have to. The other sports are laying claim to the limited space in Coquitlam. Pretty soon we will have to start turning children away from soccer because we won’t have the space for them to play. The plans we have for Coquitlam City Soccer won’t materialize because we won’t have the fields we need to grow as an organization.

MAKE IT A POINT TO GET INVOLVED WITH THIS ISSUE. Talk to your coaches, parents, friends, anyone who will listen. You never know when the person you’re talking to will have a fresh idea or be able to help in some way. Please pass this e-mail on to anyone in CCSA that I have missed. The five year Capital Plan for Parks and Facilities will be presented to City Council in June. If soccer is left out of the plans and ignored again we will be forever fighting an uphill battle to get decent fields for soccer.

Doug Macdonell

President CCSA