The official opening of the City of London grass soccer fields is May 1 for premier fields and May 8^th for neighbourhood fields. I would like to take this opportunity to point out a few items. I ask that you pass this along to all of your coaches and club executive.

 

 

City of London staff have started the process of lining fields.  As we have many fields to line this will mean that some fields will not be lined by the opening day.  We started on all of our full size fields and will move to the mid and mini fields next.  Please be patient as we work through this process.  If you have fields that have games next week we would appreciate you letting us know this.  Also if you have sites that do not have any activities planned on them next week that would be great as well as it will allow our staff to focus on the fields that need lining first.

 

 

Please take a moment to review the City of London’s Wet Field guideline.  More details are in the guideline but to summarize: In the event of severe weather I will send an email to all associations by 3:00pm letting them know the status of our fields for the evening. I will also post it on twitter so you can follow me at @MikeVandertuin for the latest updates.  If rain occurs after this time, during the weekend or during your game we ask that you refer to the Wet Field Guideline.  I have also attached a picture of what a field can look like if it is played on during and after significant rain.

 

 

You should all have your seasonal contracts as well as your EMDSL home game contracts on City of London fields. Please closely review these contracts to make sure they are accurate. If you will not be needing a field for the season please let us know ASAP as there are groups that could use it.

 

 

The constant wear and tear on a field during a practice can do considerable damage to a soccer field.  With that in mind we ask your coaches to move around there drills to different parts of the field to avoid damaging one section.  For example. If you are having them do a ladder drill we ask that they do that off of the field, if the goalie is doing drills in the net maybe they use the back of the net to avoid wearing out the goal mouth.  Anything that you can do to help minimize the damage would be appreciated by everyone.

 

 

Please stress the importance of picking up all the garbage that your teams leave behind.  If staff need to get off of the mowers to pick up garbage left behind this delays them from doing others things to get the fields ready.  It also can create quite a bit of damage if our lawn mowers drive over the garbage and plastic water bottles. We have plenty of garbage and recycling cans in the parks so please do your part to keep the parks and fields beautiful!

 

We wish everyone a great start to the soccer season!

 

 

Mike Vandertuin Supervisor – Allocations and Sport Services City of London   151 Dundas St. , London, ON  PO Box 5045 N6A 4L6 P: 519.661.2500 x 5197 mvandert@london.ca | www.london.ca	Mike Vandertuin
	Supervisor – Allocations and Sport Services
	City of London