Athletics continue to look for a facility for soccer
Ongoing construction at the DEL Gym may jeopardize the upcoming men’s and women’s soccer season.
The soccer pitch at Progress campus will be used for the movement and storage of equipment and supplies as the new facility continues to move towards the anticipated opening in 2010.
Steve McLaughlin is the manager of athletics and he said the field will be a thoroughfare for the construction company contracted to do the work.
“Without the DEL Gym in place we no longer have a soccer field,” McLaughlin said. “They will need that field for heavy trucks, structural steel, a fire route and all those accesses will cut out a significant portion of the existing soccer pitch for the duration of the construction project.”
Last year the Colts played their home games at L’amoreaux Park but that doesn’t mean they will be able to play there this year.
McLaughlin said the problem is other long term groups have priority over rental fields because Centennial is a short-term user.
“If you’ve been a group using soccer fields in Toronto for 10 or 20 years and Centennial comes along and says ‘we’re going to use the field for a couple of years and we’re not going to let you use it because Centennial wants it’, that’s not fair. I understand that,” McLaughlin said.
While the college is doing its best to acquire a field for the fall, the possibility of losing the season is disappointing to the men’s soccer captain Ciaran Thompson.
“It would be a real shame because we don’t have that many sports teams as it is,” Thompson said. “We just added women’s basketball and to shut down the men’s and women’s soccer program, it just doesn’t seem right.”
Thompson is optimistic that a deal will be reached with the City of Toronto but he thinks the college looks substandard because there is a lack of facilities on the campus.
“We went to Durham College and they have a beautiful (soccer) facility and they take care of it real well,” Thompson said. “With us it seems amateurish that we don’t have our own field.”
McLaughlin prefers to look forward knowing this issue will be forgotten in the next couple of years.
“Just keep in mind these are short-term issues,” McLaughlin said. “The longer term is we’ll think about this and laugh when we get our own facilities on campus. So we have to keep that in perspective as well.”
Thompson graduates in 2010 so he won’t be able to take advantage of the new facility but he thinks it’s a great thing for the school.
“It’s good and it’s a huge step forward for our college and varsity programs to get a brand new facility,” Thompson said. “From what I’ve seen it looks very nice and very professional … maybe when I come back in ten years I’ll have something to look at.”
