Kwantlen soccer field plans in the works

Plans are being drawn up between Kwantlen and the City of Surrey to put a turf soccer field at Newton Athletic Park, down the street from the Surrey campus.

Nothing is official yet, but Gordon Lee, vice-president of finance and administration at Kwantlen, feels that partnering with the city to build the field for Kwantlen’s use would greatly benefit the school.

“We have never put a lot of money into athletics. Over the past 10 years, we’ve created a gym at one campus, and we’ve developed varsity teams in four sports (basketball, soccer, badminton and golf), but again, we have never invested much in facilities,” said Lee.

Lee said that the new field would include a Kwantlen scoreboard, the university’s logo at midfield and seating for 500, but the field wouldn’t be used exclusively by Kwantlen. Since the school is sharing the cost of the field, which Lee estimates to be around $2.5 million, with the city, Surrey soccer teams would be able to use the field. Kwantlen would have priority on which times they get the field.

“The city will go ahead if we don’t partner with them, although we do think it is in the interest of the university to enter into a partnership arrangement with the city to gain access to a field which we can use that would be ours,” Lee said.

For the past five to seven years, Kwantlen has been looking into putting in an athletic field for the school’s use, but there are a couple of challenges that need to be overcome before anything can be put into action.

“There’s not a lot of space and, unfortunately, we need the space right now for parking lots,” said Lee. “The other issue is the cost of putting in a turf field, which is really the only way to go in our climate.”

But now that the field can be built at Newton Athletic Park and with cost-sharing with Surrey, both of those challenges seem to be remedied. All that’s necessary for  field construction to start is a stamp of approval from Kwantlen’s Board of Governors.

Lee said Kwantlen’s share of the field cost will be taken out of university resources; none of the money will come out the students’ pockets.

If everything goes ahead as planned, construction of the field will start early in the new year and it should be ready for the 2010 soccer season.

In the future, Lee said that Kwantlen hopes to expand fitness and sports facilities at all campuses to get everyone involved in either competitive or recreational sports, but the problem is the lack of space.

“The Richmond campus is even more of a problem, because there’s no land space around there at all. We have been talking with the City of Richmond about using the Oval after the Olympics and that’s a big possibility for the indoor sports,” he said.