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Correction. The house league kids start their season on grass fields, but it doesn't take long for the fields to break down in the October rain and they move to gravel. The only time my U15 gold boys play on grass is when we travel to Sechelt.

8:30 warmup for 9AM games, on gravel fields all over Vancouver. My U15 boys team is on it's 3rd or 4th season of 8:30 AM starts (on a good turf field). Some of these kids will grow up never having played on a grass field.

I actually think we'd retain some of our best young athletes who we now force to choose between soccer and hockey. I've written here before about the number of kids I've coached who tried and failed to juggle the two sports. Those 7am hockey practices don't look so bad to parents when the...

I feel like this has all been discussed before, but...exactly where are soccer and baseball sharing fields? Nowhere that the 4d teams are playing that I can think of. But let's assume you're right, and these are the obstacles that would have to be overcome. Does that mean we should shrug...

If nothing else comes out of Vancouver's experience with a real Canadian winter, I hope it will lead the powers that be to seriously consider moving the season away from October-February. We will have missed at least 4 games and 8 practices to the weather this year. Is there anyone with VYSA or...

The two best coaches my kids have ever had were both volunteers. My son got hooked on soccer-tennis playing soccer-tennis with his friends for countless hours after his volunteer coach showed them how to do it, then got out of the way. My son's high school soccer team was a powerhouse this...

Lucky how? No league in BC should be scheduling (outdoor) soccer games for Nov-Jan.

I can't remember a year when we haven't lost games due to bad weather. This has been the most extreme, but every november-december it get's too cold to play. I wonder how many 5 year olds we've lost this year.

Don't let your daughter fall into the "high performance" trap, and be wary of any coach or club that tells you it's better suited to develop a 9 year old than the team where she's having fun now. Having fun is the ONLY thing that matters at that age. If she's having fun, she'll keep playing...

Priority 1. Easiest, quickest and least expensive way to improve the soccer experience for our kids and the overall level of play in BC. More important than exclusionary high performance leagues, expensive camps.

Sorry, but it doesn't change year to year. Novembers are brutal. The first weekend of December has been the coldest point of every soccer season since I started coaching 8 seasons ago. It'll stay cold and wet through January, then we'll have one, maybe two nice weekends in February. Then, in...

Did anyone else watch kids suffer through the blowing rain yesterday? There's absolutely no good reason to be playing at this time of year.

The point is that a lot of kids, and especially their parents, DO mind the cold and rain. Is the goal to try and chase them away, or is it to keep kids playing soccer?

I don't follow your logic. Why not let all players play when the weather is good? Anyone who wants to play more can go year-round. High-level players ALL start out as rec players.

Practices canceled all over the lower mainland tonight.

Sorry for hijacking the discussion here. Maybe not the most appropriate forum.

The single most important thing we can do for soccer here is ensure young kids have an opportunity to get hooked on an equal footing with other sports. That they get to play organized soccer without fear of frostbite would be a bare minimum expectation. Off the top of my head, I recall 4 of...

You grew up playing soccer in fall and winter, yet you'd put your kids through the same thing? My kids played baseball only on little league fields that are strictly off-limits to soccer. Soccer games all played on soccer (and ultimate) only turf fields that go largely unused in spring. The...

I can't think of any soccer pitches in Vancouver that are shared with baseball. Our grass pitches are unplayable in soccer season and unused by league soccer players when they're in good shape.

Sorry, but this argument about a conflict with baseball just doesn't cut it. We schedule our kids to play soccer in the only 3 months of the year when games are likely to be canceled due to weather. When it's virtually impossible to play games on our grass fields. In 8 years of coaching winter...