EDMONTON- After having their seasons delayed for weeks due to poor outdoor field conditions, it appears there’s new hope for athletes across our city.
The later than anticipated spring has stunted grass growth, causing area soccer fields and ball diamonds to remain closed until conditions improved.
The closures have forced athletes indoors for weeks, which has been especially tough on the senior women’s soccer team at Harry Ainlay High School.
After falling just short of a city championship last year, the Titans had hoped to come back and win it this year. And a shortened season will make the challenge that much tougher on the team.
“When our coach first gave us the schedule it had eight or nine games on it and I thought they were all ours, but that was the entire schedule for the whole year, so we only got, like, four of them,” explained senior Andrea Holmes.
“To the (Grade) 12s, it’s a big impact on them. You know, when it’s looking at a four game league and a two game playoff, some teams might only get five games of soccer at a high school level. It’s kind of disappointing when you hear in B.C. they’ve been going for close to two months,” said head coach George Hoyt. “But that’s northern Alberta, unfortunately.”
The team thought they’d have a head start to the season, after participating in an early tournament in Victoria. But, without outdoor fields to practice on, it’s made training a bit more difficult. The team has been forced to practice inside the school gym.
“It’s not the same at all. The ball just goes everywhere, it’s slippery,” Holmes explained.
“A gym is just one seventh of what a soccer field is, so to get your shape and formations, it’s a little hard,” Hoyt said. “And when you have handball and badminton and all those things going on it’s really tough to get gym time.”
But, the city gave the team some good news Friday afternoon. It seems as though fields will be opening sooner than anticipated.
“A week ago I would have thought May 10 was a reasonable date.That snow we got earlier in the week, believe it or not, actually helped us because it gave us moisture, and then coupled with the warm temps we’ve had, it’s really kick started a lot of the fields,” explained Marvin Kirkpatrick, sports field supervisor with the City of Edmonton.
Kirkpatrick says the city usually tries to have fields ready to go by May 1. But because of the unseasonably cool temperatures we’ve been experiencing, that’s not been an option. And Kirkpatrick says if they open the fields too soon, it ends up doing further harm to the grass, and results in poor field conditions.
“In the spring time the key is when your night temps remain above zero. Because if they keep going below zero then you get the freeze every night, it thaws a bit in the morning, but the ground doesn’t. You’ve got to get the ground temp up in order to get the grass to green.”
But after nearly a week of warm temperatures, the city says it can open the majority of fields Monday, a week earlier than expected.
And while the senior members of the Titans would have preferred to have a full season this year, they say it’s not going to stop them from bringing home the championship.
“We have to go out there and give it our all every time. We have to practice harder and you need to make sure those games count because you don’t have time to lose a few at the beginning,” said Holmes.
Not all soccer fields and ball diamonds will open Monday, though. The city says about two per cent of fields still need another 10 days of heat for ideal conditions. The city is also asking for patience, as it paints the lines on the approximately 1,650 fields in Edmonton.
With files from Dean Millard.
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