The kids of Brazil, Senegal and Tunisia don't all play soccer on lush fields of natural grass or artificial turf.
For some, a gym floor or even a gravel parking lot will suffice. They make do with what they have and the system works quite well. All three countries qualified for this year's World Cup.
Terrol Russell wants our soccer kids to change the way they play the game to help speed their development and has a plan to get them off the grass and into the tight confines of a hardwood gymnasium.
Now six months into his job as director of club operations for the Prince George Youth Soccer Association, Russell, in partnership with the P.G. Dome, is creating the first-ever youth indoor soccer league. Beginning in November, kids in three age divisions will be playing in the youth/adult SuperSoccer League, a variation of futsal with no offsides which allows players to use the walls of the gym to make passes and create plays.
"We need to change the environment the players are in. This idea of playing on turf and grass all year round, if that's the way to go and we've done such a good job, how come we were producing more (home-grown) players for the national team in the '80s than we are now?" asks Russell. "They're all being produced out of other environments. Part of the issue is our athletes aren't playing in diverse enough environments throughout the year. Right now, when we look at our (outdoor) results provincially they're not at the level we'd like them to be and we also aren't producing the level of player that we can be."
"If Prince George and region are going to produce athletes that reach higher levels of the game we have no choice but to provide development year-round."
Getting kids playing 5-on-5 futsal with live boards on a hard, flat playing surface will result in a faster game, with balls deflecting at all angles. Russell says the constant flow of the game will help kids develop better ball-handling skills and fitness benefits they wouldn't so readily acquire if they were playing the indoor game on field turf on a surface where sideline boundaries are in effect.
"It causes the athletes to find solutions to the different ways balls bounce off the wall and the players are moving consistently so we're building new levels of fitness within the athletes," Russell said. "We're challenging the brain and the body. It's quicker, so the brain has to think quicker and the body has to respond faster. They get more touches."
Russell has already created a partnership with the Prince George Soccer Association men's and women's outdoor leagues beginning in the spring of 2019 which will create under-21 teams to ease the transition of youth players to adult soccer. He foresees a similar team for 18- to 21-year-olds coming out of the youth indoor league that will make the jump to the adult indoor league.
Membership in the PGYSA has hovered around the 1,600 mark the past two seasons, down considerably from the late-1990s when there were as many as 3,400 registered players.
P.G. Dome director Jon LaFontaine grew up playing soccer in Prince George and played for the Prince George Fury in 2009. Although the Fury lasted just one season in the Canadian Major Indoor Soccer League, it holds the distinction as the first Prince George professional sports team in any league. He was a regular on the scene in the North Cariboo Senior Soccer League and also played in the B.C. Indoor Soccer League and he says there's never been an indoor option for youth players wanting to play in a league through the cold-weather months. Ever since the Rotary Youth Fields were created in the early 1990s, which separated youth players from the adults, kids and adults have kept to themselves, working as separate entities. Until now.
"This is a good thing for the soccer community, where kids can start feeding into the adult system," said LaFontaine. "Back in the day at old Rotary Stadium, you had kids who would play and then everyone would go to the bleachers after and watch the men's games. That connection is not there. We've got to try something different to build that back up.
"I've always supported PGYSA. I don't like what's happened with the soccer community. Everyone has these egos and the focus hasn't been going to the kids, it's been going to this group, that group. There's Epic, there's Fusion, the Whitecaps, the Timberwolves have a group and there's PGYSA and Northern United (Football Club). There's so much division over the last 10 years. You have six different groups fighting for these kids and Terrol has come in and identified that right away and wants to work to build the partnerships and I want to be a support piece for that."
LaFontaine plays in the four-team male adult indoor league which started at the P.G. Dome last year. It's a separate entity from the B.C. Indoor Soccer League which plays at the Charles Jago Northern Sport Centre and operates men's, women's and co-ed leagues.
The youth division of the SuperSoccer League will consist of two age divisions - 12-15 and 14-17. - and it will share the two indoor pitches at the P.G. Dome, formerly known as the Roll-A-Dome. A grassroots indoor league for kids six to 11 is also being created and their games will be played at the PGYSA indoor soccer centre on Winnipeg Street.
The youth league will start Nov. 12 and each team will play one game and have one training session per week in three five-week blocks with breaks at Christmas, February and April. The more competitive players can opt in for more training sessions. Registration costs vary from $145 for grassroots players to $185 for the youth division. The league will have four teams in each age group, male and female.
To try to build up rivalries and stimulate fan interest the SuperSoccer League will organize an indoor World Cup-style tournament to mark the end of the season. The adults will play their tournament in March and the kids will have theirs in April.
More information is on the league website at www.pgysa.bc.ca.
