Above Watch: The City of Moncton has closed sports fields indefinitely because of water. Brion Robinson reports.
MONCTON – The City of Moncton says its sports fields are closed until they can dry out from the wet and cold spring weather.
Dan Hicks is the director of operations for Parks and Leisure Services and says the fields are inundated with water and allowing people to use them could cause damage.
“They’re so wet right now that if we tried to put any equipment or staff on them we would cause more damage than we would solve at this point,” he said.
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Gorden Horsman is the caretaker for the CN Sportplex and in charge of an 85-acre site that includes ball fields and soccer fields.
He says the city needs warm weather to fix the problem.
“It’s so saturated right now nothing will dry until we can see some sunshine,” he said. “Weather-wise I would say we’re at least two to three weeks behind.”
Horsman says besides damage, playing on the ballfields would be very messy.
“It would just turn to muck under your feet,” he said. “They’re basically sand, silt and clay mixes and they don’t dry out very fast.”
The delays are hampering some teams from badly-need outdoor practice time.
Yves Pellerin coaches the rugby girls team at the L’Odysee High School and says the girls have a short spring playing season and need to practice on real grass.
“The girls are ready to play physically but there’s a lot of practice time that needs to be played outside first,” he said. “For the contact part of the game you can’t really do any inside the gym.”
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