By Joanne Oostveen-The Weekly News
Soccer registration has long been a sign of spring in Nova Scotia. But with both spring and summer soccer enjoying huge popularity in HRM, organizers at the Dartmouth United and Cole Harbour Soccer clubs say they need more help.
"We are always in need of volunteers, particularly for coaching youth teams in the summer, especially for the kids aged five to 10," said Don Zorychta, vice-president of the mini division and administrator for the Cole Harbour Soccer Club.
"In a typical summer season, we require 80 volunteers to fill coach and assistant coach requirements."
In the summer months, the Cole Harbour Soccer Club has approximately 1,000 players, mostly aged five to 18, with senior teams aged 19 to 55.
Zorychta said at the organization level, he is happy with the volunteer executive, but it isn't always easy to find coaches.
"Any frustrations I have stem from the difficulty to get parent volunteers to coach kids aged five to 10," he said. "We always seem to get enough, but there is a lot of time spent recruiting parent volunteers to coach mini teams."
The Dartmouth United Soccer Club has similar issues.
"In the past, our club was run entirely by volunteers," said Katie Aucoin, Dartmouth United administrator. "As our organization grew and participants wanted more soccer training, we needed to hire technical and administrative staff to handle the workload. "
Aucoin said as the volunteer base diminishes, more of the work has to be done by staff.
"Although we try to keep our registration costs as low as possible, this is difficult to accomplish when more tasks require paid staff," she said. "Over the past year, we operated 118 summer teams and 32 winter teams."
The Dartmouth club has about 2,000 players participating in activities every summer and also offers programs for all ages, ranging from three- year-olds to senior players.
They are always in need of more volunteers, said Aucoin, but are proud of the roughly 500 people who volunteer throughout the year.
"Volunteers coach and manage our teams, act as age group co-ordinators, organize our tournaments, sit on our board of directors and help organize team equipment," she said. "They are the backbone of our organization. We would be unable to operate without them."
Zorychta said new volunteers interested in coaching will be provided with coach training.
"The reasons why it's hard to find volunteers include conflicts with work, (they're) already a volunteer in another sport, not familiar with the sport, too busy taking multiple kids to multiple activities, away for vacation and in some cases a lack of interest in wanting to give something back to their community," he said.
But both clubs said they are willing to help anyone who shows an interest in helping with soccer.
"I believe that everyone should volunteer to help out a worthy organization," said Zorychta. "It helps promote a better community spirit, is very rewarding and for parents and it's a positive influence on their kids."
joanneoostveenn@accesswave.ca
