As the soccer season wound down last week, members of the Jasper Minor Soccer Association met to pack away the nets at the Centennial Park field.
The smaller junior nets had to go, but there was a serious discussion about taking down the regulation-sized nets as well.
Many felt they should be left up, to give soccer enthusiasts a chance to play for the rest of the summer. The problem: the field is in such bad condition some members wanted to remove the nets to keep people from playing on it.
Actively discouraging use of the town’s sports fields seems crazy, but for many forced to play on terrible conditions during their sports games, it doesn’t seem that way.
Joan Dillon is the past director of Jasper Minor Soccer, and is still heavily involved in the organization. She explained that the field at Centennial Park is in terrible shape - any green on it is mostly weeds, it’s plagued with divots and brown patches, and the ground itself is unforgivably hard - and it’s getting worse every year.
“It’s a real ankle turner,” she said.
Dillon said that watching last month’s soccer tournaments in Jasper she was constantly worried a player would hurt themselves because of those poor conditions.
“There’s a lot of dips that you could twist an ankle in,” she said. “We don’t want kids playing there that are going to hurt themselves because of the conditions of the field.”
She said parents and coaches from Jasper’s competitors have often raised similar concerns with her, and she worries it reflects poorly on the town.
Jasper’s culture and recreation director Yvonne McNabb said she is aware that people are raising safety concerns about the field, but that she’s never received a formal complaint about field safety.
Seven years ago the field was completely redone, at a cost of close to $200,000. The finished product was, according to Counsellor Brian Nesbitt, a beautiful field that was properly graded and nicely sodded.
But that condition did not last.
During the field’s facelift large boulders left over from Kinder Morgan’s Anchor Loop pipeline expansion project were brought in as fill. Over the years of use the layer of topsoil settled, “and now everything’s settling all crooked,” Nesbitt said.
Nesbit is involved with the rugby program in town, and said he can remember sections of the field being spray-painted to alert players to large rocks that were emerging through the topsoil.
He explained that the municipality also made a choice not to use herbicides on the field, which, combined with the challenging growing conditions in Jasper, has meant grass hasn’t been able to flourish there.
Don Pickle is the municipality’s infrastructure manager. He said that the municipality maintains the field primarily by mowing and irrigating it - occasionally filling in depressions with topsoil and twice a season aerating. But that only helps so much.
“The biggest problem is that [the] field is just non-stop used - so it never actually gets a recovery period,” he explained. “So for anything to actually get established or get rooted it’s next to impossible.”
According to McNabb, because the Centennial Park field is the only regulation-sized soccer field in town, there is never a break in the activities schedule that would provide enough time for the rooting Pickle talks about.
Along with the nearly constant use for sports programs, she pointed out the space is also used for events like the folk festival, Yukigassen snowball fight and fireworks shows.
“It just needs time to repair itself, and we just can’t give it that,” she said.
One bright spot, according to McNabb, is the fact that $200,000 is set aside in the 2016 capital budget to overhaul the field.
Nesbitt is happy that the field will finally be repaired, but thinks it’s unwise to keep spending money to fix it if those repairs only last a few years.
“I think we’re going to have to get educated in what options we have to get to that 15 year lifespan.”
“We’ve got to find out what has to be done, and do it right,” he said.
Dillon agreed, saying she would like to see all the groups who have an interest in the field come together and do some more serious planning. There might even be grants to help cover the cost of additional upkeep, she said.
So far there seems to be little movement in any of those directions, and Nesbitt said that whether it’s for safety, pleasure or peace of mind, it’s important that Jasper be proud of its sports fields.
“Everyone who plays hockey is so proud of our arena - and we want to be proud of our Centennial Park too,” Nesbitt said.
Trevor Nichols
[email protected]
