Surrey’s surging youth population putting pressure on sports fields | Globalnews.ca

It’s not just schools in Surrey that are facing overcrowding. Local sports associations also warn they’re running out of room.

About one in four people in the fast-growing city are aged 19 or younger, and sports groups say there simply aren’t enough playing fields and hours in the day to accommodate all the practices and games.

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The surging enrollment at Surrey schools has also meant a proliferation of portables, some of which are now intruding onto playing fields.

Close to 15,000 youth play soccer in the city.

“We’re in a crunch for field resources,” said Surrey United Soccer Club sporting director Jeff Clark.

Clark said some soccer programs have had to implement caps on registration because there aren’t enough turf fields. Grass fields, he added, can’t stand up to the winter weather.

“I would argue that a new turf field probably needs to come online every year, year and a half, especially to catch up with the demand of today, but also the plan for the growth,” he said.

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Soccer mom Jacqueline Knoblauch said the space crunch means sometimes up to 10 teams are using a single field for practice at the same time.

“The season got extended because there were too many cancellations because of the weather and so that limits the amount of play the kids get,” she said.

The City of Surrey says it has installed three turf fields for a total of 17, and four grass fields for a total of 66 in the last decade, and will consider more funding in its next budget cycle.

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