By Peter Severinson
Lunch hour is an exciting time these days in the gymnasium at Elgin Street Public School. The room echoes with high-pitched cheers and the thumping of dozens of sneakered feet as two teams of seven- to nine-year-olds chase a bouncing neon-yellow soccer ball.
Young strikers in pigtails race to give the ball haphazard kicks as pint-sized keepers crouch between pairs of orange pylons, biting their lips in concentration, all to the tune of, “Let’s go Ice Dogs, let’s go!”
This isn’t gym class, nor is it a casual neighbourhood pick-up game.
This is a small indoor soccer league put together by one of the school’s teachers, and for many of these children, it’s their first experience with organized sport.
Geoff Heney is in his second year of teaching at Elgin and has been organizing these games for almost a month. He says that while intramural teams are fairly common for older primary school students, there’s usually very little in the way of organized sports for those in Grades 2 and 3.
But this is a great age for children to start playing on a team, he says. It’s easier to get younger children interested in sports, especially since kids with different levels of athletic ability can still play together successfully.
“The ones that don’t have that high level don’t seem to care… and the ones that have the high level don’t seem to come down on the other kids. It’s really open to all levels at this age,” he says.
The league has been popular from the start, Heney says. It began with enthusiastic support from the school’s administration and now, with 42 kids participating, more than half the school’s Grade 2 and 3 students are involved.
Amanda Blake, nine, is a Grade 3 student who says she’s never played an organized team sport before joining this league. Her team, the Panthers, have lost all but one of the six games they’ve played so far, she says, but that doesn’t matter much to her.
“It’s all fun playing it,” she says, explaining how defense is her favourite position. “You kind of block the ball so it doesn’t get to the goalie.”
Amanda’s older cousins play on real soccer teams, she says, “with jerseys and everything,” and she decided to join this league so she could learn to play with them.
Even though her team hasn’t seen many wins, Amanda intends to keep playing and says she’s planning on joining more soccer teams when she’s older.
Heney says while many children this age are involved in some athletic programming after school, not all children have this opportunity and it’s important to give them the chance to participate in a physical, group activity like a sports team.
“I think it helps them with team-building,” he says. “I hope they’re getting the idea that playing some kind of sport is a nice way to spend your leisure time and that they don’t have to be sitting around.”
Principal Shelly Langlois says she was thrilled when Heney proposed the lunch-hour soccer games for the younger students, something entirely new to the school.
It’s difficult to run programs like this in a small school like Elgin, which only has 16 teachers on staff.
“If you have a staff of 50, you can take on more [programs],” Langlois says. “We’re stretched pretty thin.”
But despite its support and success, Heney says the league will probably not continue for the full year.
There will simply be too much demand for gym space when the older children begin their basketball and volleyball training and the school play goes into production.
However, Heney says he will certainly continue the primary indoor soccer league in future years.
“It’s one of my highlights of teaching. I love doing that type of thing.”