The Saugeen Shores United Football Club is working with the Town to install soccer field lighting that will open up Helliwell Park in Southampton to more use.
Jeff Virgo and Brian Binning from the Saugeen Shores United Football Club recently made a presentation to council explaining that soccer is growing in the community and lighting the field sooner than planned will enable the club to handle growth better.
Council agreed to front some money to put the pitch lights in during phase one of the work, rather than in a later phase. The Soccer club will put forward $104,000 and the Town will advance about $246,000 to cover the funding shortfall. The soccer club will eventually provide the town with a total of $350,000 once it’s raised. They estimate they can do that by 2030.
Mayor Luke Charbonneau notes, “Our original plan was phasing it so that the Town could afford it, but now with the contribution of the football club we can advance it and do it as part of phase one, so we’ll have lights at Helliwell earlier than planned, which is great.”
The Town is making improvements to Helliwell Park, and changing the current soccer pitch layout to one that will have two soccer fields that can also be four mini soccer fields. That work is set to be done over the next year or two. Phase two on the park would be done over the next five to ten years and includes plans for basketball, pickleball a dog park and walking paths. That was when one soccer field was going to get lights. Now it will happen sooner.
Virgo told Council, the Saugeen Shores United Football club offers Timbits Under 4 and Under 6 soccer, recreational soccer for 8 and 10, house league travel in Grey Bruce and adult recreational soccer. They offer rep teams and provide an all abilities adapted soccer program which has over 35 members in Grey Bruce. They provide mini soccer camps and indoor programming in the fall and winter.
Virgo said in a delegation to council back on April 14th, they have about 890 people taking part, 90 of whom are adults. He noted, “A lot of youth soccer players in our town, which is awesome to see.” He projects they’ll soon be at 950 participants when planned fields go in at Helliwell park as part of upgrades in the Town’s park master plan.
Brian Binning noted in the April 14th delegation, the town’s recreational master plan says the recommended ratio of players to fields is 70 players per field. “We’ve well exceeded that ratio of players to fields and are projected to continue to rise in our registration. We’re well over 37 per cent over that recommended standard,” said binning.
He added, “We do our best to make sure we’re offering soccer to all sorts of groups, but we are currently at a scenario where we can’t offer soccer to all the interested parties and capping registration base on field availability.”
Binning told council a lot of players in the under 12 and under 15 groups have had to play the majority of their games away because there isn’t home field availability.
“One of the things we are very proud of as a club is that we are a very affordable soccer program for all ages,” said Binning.
Virgo also noted they plan to look at creating more adult leagues in Saugeen Shores.
He said to council, “With the Helliwell fields, adding those two main pitches, we add more medium sized fields that we can offer soccer day and night, providing the lights, hitting that higher target of adult recreation leagues.” Virgo said it will help them support school soccer tournaments and added, the Lamont Sports Park which has a number of baseball diamonds hosts tournaments, and Virgo notes, brings in dollars from people visiting the community.
