Digby soccer scores big

Digby soccer has arrived.

Two Digby teams won their respective Valley District championships and the two teams are playing this weekend in Provincials.

The 2007 under-16 girls and under-17 are the first Digby summer teams to ever go so far.

These victories are great accomplishments in and of themselves.

The young players and their coaches should be proud.

But the success of these two teams is also a reflection of the great work and dedication of everyone involved with Digby’s summer soccer program.

This year for the first time ever, every single Digby team but one made it into the play off rounds.

Ten years ago four parents responded to an ad in the Digby Courier looking for someone to organize a summer soccer program here.

Close to 50 kids signed up that year but only 20 actually stuck around all summer. Today there are 300 kids in the program.

That’s 300 kids involved in a high-level aerobic sport – a sport that demands an exceptional level of fitness just to last the 90 minutes of a regular game.

That’s 300 kids and families with a focus, 300 kids who aren’t complaining there is nothing to do, 300 kids learning the importance of goal-setting, hard work and dedication.

That’s 300 kids who are having fun, guaranteed, every week all summer long.

This simply could not happen without a great deal of effort and support from countless volunteers. These victories are clear signs of the health and vigor of the organization and also highlight the invisible work of those volunteers – they too deserve the applause and admiration of the community.

There are more signs that Digby’s soccer program is on the right track. Every year since 2002, one high school team or another has made it to provincials. The senior girls alone have won three silver medals in the past four years.

That kind of success is a direct result of introducing local children to the sport at a young age.

It is therefore a doubly good sign to see so many young coaches, young family and young athletes take part in the Digby program. This year alone Digby certified six new coaches for the mini-soccer program.

Still, if soccer is to continue to grow and if the athletes are to continue to excel, government needs to make sure simple things like fields are in place and maintained.

When the Valley District soccer association surveyed every field in the valley recently, the high school field received a low B and the elementary school field a C. To be fair, recent work on the elementary school has brought it to a low B.

But is this good enough?

We have two teams at provincials this weekend but because of a lack of fields we can forget ever dreaming of hosting the tournament ourselves.

No other sport allows so many athletes to run around the field at once – 22 players on the field and running for every game.

DARC’s priorities these days lay more in the direction of trail development – arguably a lot of people, seniors included, can make use of trails.

But our municipal leadership needs to take a good hard look at either lights to double playing time on local fields, or installing another couple fields, perhaps on land in the industrial park behind the elementary school.

Digby soccer is a success story and our leaders would do well to put their money on these kids to keep winning.