Soccer gets a foothold in school activities calendar

By Kate Hayden, khayden@charlescitypress.com

Charles City High School students may be one step closer to having home team on the soccer field.

The Charles City Board of Education approved adding soccer to the 2017-2018 activities calendar during Monday’s meeting at the Floyd Community Center. The request was brought forward by district Activities Director Todd Forsyth.

A soccer team’s initial cost would be about $20,000, Forsyth told the board. A team would likely play at the College Grounds fields, located next to the district’s current bus barns. Portable bleachers and a few electrical cores located on the grounds would accompany game setups. 

“I think we can make it work. It’s a starter point,” Forsyth said.

Community soccer teams are available in Charles City to students through eighth grade, provided by volunteers and the Charles City YMCA. The district did a survey of 140 students not currently participating in spring sports, and 133 said they would be interested in soccer, Forsyth said.

Forsyth said he is considering organizing a co-ed soccer team for the district to start off with, with the potential of splitting boys and girls into separate teams in the future if the program grows.

The district is also considering sharing a team with nearby school districts or allowing outside students to open-enroll in the program, as Charles City students do in Mason City. Six Charles City students currently commute to Mason City to participate in that high school soccer program. 

“We’re at a point where we have a lot of community support, a lot of people want to step up to the plate,” Forsyth said. “I think we have a community that has been patient with how great a want this is. We have a youth program, we have a feeder program which the community has built on their own with the help of the YMCA.

“Soccer is knocking on our door,” he added.

The challenge, he told the board, will be setting the schedule. It’s unlikely Charles City will have a full game schedule in it’s first year as a team — there will likely be around 12 games, instead of 16 or 17 games.

“I have three athletic directors where I have said, ‘hold us a spot just in case,'” Forsyth said.

Adding soccer could also potentially affect involvement in current spring sports — most likely affecting tennis and golf. 

“The state … boys’ and girls’ associations are concerned about the overcrowding of spring sports. There’s real concern about girls’ soccer going so far into the softball season,” Forsyth said. “I think it’s a problem throughout the state. People look at these things and say ‘how can we do these things so kids have these opportunities.'”

The board’s approval on Monday simply starts the process, President Scott Dight noted.

“Approval tonight is just the beginning of how this will work to get everything organized for next spring,” Dight said. “We don’t have answers to the other hundred questions that are laying out there … Who will be the coach, who we’ll be playing … there’s a lot of things that will happen over the course of the next few months.”

“I don’t know that I can predict how it’s going to turn out or how it’s going to look, but I do think we are in a position right now where we can move forward,” Forsyth said.