PUSLINCH ‒ Field shortages have led to costly solutions for a local soccer club bursting at the seams.
During it delegation Wednesday morning, the Puslinch Minor Soccer Club (PMSC) asked Puslinch council to renew its field maintenance contract at Calvary Baptist Church (CBC), waive user fees in 2024/2025, and take over painting field lines in lieu of covering more expensive activities like field rentals or building additional fields.
While the township's 2014 Parks Master Plan noted "a long-term need" for approximately seven full-sized soccer fields, the equivalent of one field per 80 participants, the PMSC's longtime president, Bruce Joy, said they've been relying solely on the Badenoch soccer field since the Puslinch Community Centre Park (PCC) construction began, removing one full-sized and one smaller field from the roster.
The township maintained the CBC's soccer field for two years at a cost of $12,231, before they ended the contract in 2017, leaving the PMSC "on the hook."
"We just don't have enough soccer fields for the number of players we have," said Joy, during his delegation to the Parks and Recreation committee earlier this month. "So as you can imagine, it was a very tough challenge to go out and rent fields for our members to play over the last several years and especially this past year."
Earlier this year, the township waived all rental fees at the PCC soccer field to minimize the impact of construction-related closures but Joy said the group lost upwards of $15,000 in 2023 after they were forced to find alternative and often costly solutions to accommodate Puslinch's field deficit.
"We did not anticipate these costs this year," said Joy. "We thought everything was okay and then it wasn't."
The largest minor sports organization in Puslinch, PMSC currently paints its own lines and provides the nets, goals, and other equipment for games, whereas municipalities like Eden Mills offer funding and maintenance solutions, which Joy used as an example in his presentation.
But of the PMSC's over 500 members, Joy approximated only 50 per cent of the non-profit's members are Puslinch residents.
"We have not gone bankrupt," said Joy. "But if we continue to lose $15,000 a year, then we might."
However, in their report, township staff recommended Puslinch "no longer maintain non-township owned property," suggesting the PMSC partner directly with the CBC instead.
Staff also said the town is not equipped for line painting, again, pointing the group towards the CBC for answers.
In 2020, the PMSC donated $20,000 to the township for a new field but Joy said while there's been some discussion about building them in existing parks, their lack of parking removes them as options.
Updated user fees for the PMSC will be set in January 2024 but are anticipated to increase.
Isabel Buckmaster is the Local Journalism Initiative reporter for GuelphToday. LJI is a federally-funded program.
