Kids running out of fields to play on, says Surrey United’s Jeff Clarke
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There is a serious lack of sports fields available for kids in Cloverdale and Surrey to play on, says Jeff Clarke.
“We’re on the verge of a field crisis in Surrey,” warned Clarke, the sporting director for Surrey United Soccer Club. “The simple fact is that our population is outpacing the number of new fields that are being built.”
Surrey United is based out of Cloverdale Athletic Park and plays most of their home games on the field turf there. Clarke has witnessed field allocation problems balloon over the past five years.
And he’s talking about field turf, or artificial turf fields (ATF), not grass. Field turf surfaces that have lighting. Field turf is the plastic grass playing surfaces with crushed rubber and sand in-fill on top of a cement pad. He said grass is no-go in solving the problem as the fields aren’t durable and are often closed in the winter if there is too much rain. Also grass fields don’t have lights, so no one can practice on them after 5 p.m. in the winter.
Clarke is part of a City of Surrey committee that allocates field usage and he said Cloverdale is falling behind other parts of the city because of the housing developments being built here, which in turn are bringing in more and more people.
“When you consider where we’re at, compared to other municipalities, we’re already way behind the eight ball,” explained Clarke. “My concern is that the city has a proposed five-year plan, but the first turf field that is going to be built, according to that plan, is in year four.”
Clarke said it makes no sense to him because the crisis is here now. He said kids and families can’t wait four more years while the population continues to climb before adding another field. He said that type of planning will never catch up with the ever-increasing need.
“The infrastructure plan is not aligning with our population growth,” he added. “It really puts a bind on sporting groups.”
Clarke is also on the city’s Outdoor Sports Advisory Committee. OSAC encompasses all outdoor sports in the city that play on both fields and courts. He said everyone’s saying the same thing: there’s not enough fields and there is too much travel.
“For our club, we have members from Clayton and because there’s no (available) fields, they have the choice of driving 45 minutes to an hour in rush hour to Tom Binnie (Whalley) or Hjorth (Guildford), or driving eight minutes to Willoughby,” explained Clarke. “I talk to Langley Soccer and they’ve had a significant spike in registrations from Surrey residents. So our tax-paying members are taking their business to Langley because Surrey’s been remiss in providing adequate facilities.”
According to numbers provided by Clarke, youth registrations for the 2022-2023 soccer season at Cloverdale Athletic Park (CAP) numbered 3,100. With three fields available, that means there were 1,033 kids per field at CAP. Whereas, registrants for soccer at Tom Binnie (one field) were only 300. (See chart above for full numbers and rankings.)
Clarke said Surrey is suffering overall, when compared to other communities (see second chart). Surrey is ranked fifth behind Richmond, Vancouver, the North Fraser area, and Burnaby. When broken down, Cloverdale itself is suffering more than any other area in Surrey.
“The population is booming in Cloverdale and the number of registrants per artificial turf (field) is significantly higher than other parts of Surrey,” he said. “We don’t have the same issue in Newton, definitely not at Hjorth, and no one from Cloverdale wants to drive to North Surrey, Tom Binnie. So it’s, more significantly, a Clayton, Cloverdale and Fleetwood issue.”
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He said in 2018 the city had the Two EE’s Farm market property earmarked for a “destination athletic park” that would have seen two turf fields built to help alleviate the Cloverdale congestion, but the space got taken by the Translink for a Skytrain station.
“They don’t have a plan anymore,” he said. “And not the next field will be built in four years? Not only is the variance going to be greater, but there is going to be way more people in the town centres.”
City councillor Linda Annis said, as a city councillor and as the executive director of Metro Vancouver Crime Stoppers, that sports play an important role in keeping kids following beneficial pursuits and not falling into gangs and crime. She said the building of new sports fields are vital.
“It’s a pretty simple decision: build more fields or build more prisons,” Annis told the Cloverdale Reporter. “That’s how important community sports are for kids.”
Annis added that the work Surrey United Soccer Club does in Cloverdale and the greater Surrey area is important for Surrey families.
“They are right, we need more fields and more capacity,” Annis said. “Surrey kids should never be turned away from playing soccer because we don’t have enough fields, indoor or outdoor.”
Annis said years ago, mayors Dianne Watts and Linda Hepner made building sports fields “a “real priority” and she thinks that type of mentality needs to be brought back today.
“They understood that a growing city needs public amenities, including playing fields, pools, rinks and community centres,” Annis added. “Frankly, we’ve fallen behind in the past few years, and we really need to do better.”
Clarke thinks the short-term fix is to build a new field within one year. And long term, the town centre plans for Surrey need to be updated to add in turf fields that are built in line with population growth projections, not added later when the population has already outgrown existing infrastructure.
“We need to factor in sports parks. If your population is growing, where are these kids supposed to play? Where are they supposed to enjoy their sports? On the other side of it, don’t cry that we have a crime problem. If we don’t have places to put our kids, they’re going to find things to do.”
editor@cloverdalereporter.com
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