LAKELAND - According to Josh Phillips, president of the Lakeland District Soccer Association, the outdoor soccer season will start to take shape over the next few weeks.
As registrations close for soccer associations across the region, the planning stages will get underway, teams will be formed, league schedules made, referee and coach courses hosted, and fields prepared for games.
“It's typically a very busy few weeks for all the clubs as they prepare for practices to kick off, followed by a very compact two-month season,” Phillips told Lakeland This Week.
Phillips continued by saying that the outdoor season typically begins at the start of May. However, if field conditions allow, some clubs will be able to get outdoors sooner.
This year, league play for U13 teams and higher runs during the week from early May to late June. The regular season concludes with Lakeland Cup, which will be hosted in Vegreville and Cold Lake in June.
As Phillips explains, the winners of the Lakeland Cup will go on to compete at Tier IV rural provincials, which will take place in St. Paul – signifying the second year in a row that the provincial tournament happens in the Lakeland, with Cold Lake hosting last season.
Players in the U7-U11 levels will have the opportunity to compete at local mini-tournaments in Lac La Biche, Vermilion, St. Paul, and Bonnyville.
“Most of our U11 and up teams will also attend the Camrose Night Classic in early June, which is always a favourite of the players,” said Phillips.
Once the regular season for clubs wraps up, the Tier 3 Lakeland FC season will begin and run through the summer, ending with Tier 3 provincials in mid-August.
Phillips said the Lakeland soccer association also has plans to try to put an adult co-ed rec league on the field for the outdoor season, one that will run from mid-June to mid-August. This, he says, follows a successful indoor co-ed rec league which ran from November to April and saw five teams compete.
Regarding registration numbers for the upcoming outdoor season, Phillips said so far, those numbers are looking promising. He continued by saying that while officials will not have exact numbers for a few more weeks, it’s looking as though there will be a five to 10 per cent increase in growth from the 2023 outdoor season.
“We do see a large increase in registrations from the indoor season to the outdoor season for a variety of reasons, but mostly due to the lack of adequate indoor facilities across the district for the indoor season,” he explained.
Last year’s outdoor season ran smoothly and was quite successful, with around 2,000 players participating from across the district.
As players from around the district prepare to take their game outdoors after a winter of playing indoors, Phillips says the indoor season, which recently ended, was also very successful.
Roughly 950 players were registered from across the Lakeland - an increase of over 300 players from the previous season.
While this growth was welcomed, an increase in the number of players also came with issues surrounding the lack of facility space across the district. League play throughout the winter months took place on weekends, with multiple age groups congregating in one location for a weekend.
Due to a lack of indoor space, in-district tournaments are nearly impossible to host, with the exception of Lakeland Cup, which took place in Lac La Biche this season.
“It was definitely our largest ever indoor Lakeland Cup and may be the last time we’re able to host it all in one weekend, unless facilities are able to expand their space,” Phillips said. In a bid for the district’s youth teams to get in more games through the indoor season, many teams attended multiple tournaments in Edmonton.
