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Oceanside FC is encouraging more youth to become coaches with the goal of making them continue on playing soccer.
The club recently hosted BMO Kids Play BC, a BC Soccer initiative that included a coaching program for young players aged 14 to 20 years old.
The event started in the morning of July 26 at the Parksville Community Park, with members of OFC receiving on-field training on the fundamentals of coaching. Prior to the field event, participants had to complete online modules.
At the end of the program, offered for free, each participant was awarded a coaching certificate.
Later in the afternoon, the newly certified youth coaches were able to apply their training at the soccer festival for children aged five to 10 years old.
Soccer BC’s Lucas Castro, who co-ordinates the event, was happy to bring back the program to Oceanside for the second consecutive year. Last year, the BMO event was only open to female players, with goal of encouraging more girls to play soccer.
This year, they open it up to both boys and girls, offering them one of Soccer BC’s grassroot course, called ‘FUNdamentals.’
“The main idea is, through this free initiative, we encourage them to stay in the sport,” said Castro. “Especially at this age, high school age, there’s a lot of dropouts in the sport, especially in the girls side. Giving them a certification and getting them to interact, they can serve as role models for the kids.”
OFC president Mike McMillen said they’re excited to see their young members become certified coaches.
The OFC has seen their numbers grow recently and currently has close to 600 players. While they welcome the increasing participation, it also creates a dilemma for the club.
“Every year we seem to get more and more and is continuing to grow,” said McMillen. “As you know, what we lack in this area are places to play. We lack facilities. It would be great if the community could come together and produce more facilities for us to use. We’re talking more grass fields or possibly a turf fields. We have three soccer fields to serve 600 players.”
While the club is allowed to use some of the fields in Parksville Qualicum Beach area, but they are restricted to children only, meaning the older players can’t play on them.
“If you have only three fields to play and you have 600 players, you have a lot of use on one field,” said McMillen. “So, it turns into a mud pit. It would be nice to be able to play somewhere to try to keep the field in good shape. But we’re also competing with baseball, lacrosse and football. They give us half of the field here (Parksville Community Park), half-a-day on Saturday, once a week. It’s not enough. That’s the problem we have now. Space.”
The club is also forming a competitive soccer team for older players to compete in the Vancouver Island Soccer League.
“We are going to have a men’s team that’s going to be anywhere from 16 and up who can play in it,” said McMillen. “I think this will be a first for Oceanside, to my knowledge.”
The OFC has been floating the idea of having an all-season turf athletics field in the region. They made requests to both Parksville and Qualicum Beach councils and also Regional District of Nanaimo but to date nothing has happened.
“This is a great sport keep our youth involved in,” said McMillen.
The club has also approached the Qualicum School District to improve some of the soccer fields at the schools. McMillen said they are willing to pitch in some funds to get some lights installed at the soccer pitches at the schools.
“I think that would be a fantastic thing for the community,” said McMIllen.
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