February 23, 2018
Roma Soccer Club has come to the table and are exploring every
possible way to continue soccer on our Berkley fields!

In order to achieve this you need to register your child with the
Roma soccer Club asap! They have an online registration form
with a notes field where you can indicate 'Concord Kid or Berkley'.
This will allow Roma to track the numbers of children per age per
division in the hopes of maintaining soccer on the Berkley fields.
Roma also has an in person registration this Saturday February
24th from 10-12 at the Roma facility. Again please indicate you
are a concord kid wishing to play at Berkley. Here is the Roma
Soccer Club link for online registration.
romasoccer.powerupsports.com/index.php?page=LOGIN

If Roma does not receive enough registrants to maintain the
Berkley site your child will be allocated to play on the Roma fields.
Should the location at Roma not be suitable for your family Roma
has stated they will provide a complete refund of your child's
registration fees.

This is a no risk to you and your family if you desire to continue
soccer either hopefully at Berkley or somewhere else. Please
consider this incredible opportunity to play on the fields we know
and love or to join the premier soccer club in our city!

On Friday March 30th Roma will assess whether the numbers
support running soccer on the Berkley fields is viable. Please
spread the word and do not delay registering!

February 5, 2018
The Board of Concord Soccer Club is sorry to announce that we
are closing down the club, effective immediately and will no
longer run soccer programs in St. Catharines. We are currently in
discussion with one of the local soccer clubs to continue our house
league program to help ensure that every player still has a chance
to play this summer and if possible, at Berkley. More details will
follow.

We are sorry about the decision because for many of us Concord
has been a part of our lives for many years. Most of us have kids
who played at Concord, several of us still have kids who played at
Concord as recently as last summer.

We value our memories, we value the kids we coached, we value
the friends we made when we were parents standing on the
sidelines.

However, to everything there is a season. We believe our Concord
season is over. Our reasoning is as follows:

Too many Soccer Clubs-
Many of us on the Board have felt for years that St. Catharines is
over-serviced for soccer clubs. By that I mean that there are too
many soccer clubs for our population base. Fewer clubs would
benefit from an economy of scale, they would have more players
to draw from for the travel program, and there would be less in-
fighting and politics.

Over the years we have been involved with Concord we have seen
different clubs going their own way, and we don't see the kids
benefitting. We believe that kids at the house league and the
travel level would benefit from one organization in charge. Four
clubs, or five or six as it has been at various times is just too
many.

We have tried to talk mergers or associations at various times but
we haven't succeeded. Maybe the failure was the result of egos
or fear, possibly we presented the idea poorly, or possibly other
clubs just thought merger was a bad idea.

Demographics-
Western St. Catharines is growing. Northern St. Catharines is
aging. The school age number of kids in the North is smaller than
it was ten years ago, though the population of St. Catharines is
greater.

Soccer clubs have fixed costs that don't change despite a drop in
numbers. Whether we have a thousand kids or six hundred there
are costs we can't avoid. With six hundred the profit margin
becomes perilously small, unless prices are raised-which tends to
drive away a part of our population base.

Over the years, especially of late, our costs were increasing and
our revenues were decreasing. This is a bad business model-even
for a non-profit.

Board Fatigue-
Any non-profit Board needs new blood. New Board members
bring new ideas and fresh energy. Motivated Board members,
with the interest of the kids at heart, are what keeps a soccer club
running.

We have Board members like that. I am honoured to have
worked with many of the Board members I have served with over
the last decade or so. Several are still on the Board. That is part
of the problem.

We haven't been able to bring in the new people the club needs.
Quite possibly that is our fault. It may also have something to do
with a Canadian culture that has seen a drop in volunteerism.

Those of you that have been around the Club for a few years have
seen the May-June roaming of Board members round the fields in
an attempt to get people to coach. You have seen Board
members out coaching one or more teams because we couldn't
find coaches. The issue we have with persuading people to coach
is nothing compared to the issue we have had getting people to
take meaningful positions on the Board.

Whatever the reason, we have a Board that has reached a stage
of fatigue.

The last few years have been tumultuous. Several of the fields
we used were sold out from under us and we had to scramble to
find new fields. We built entire new micros fields and created new
intermediate fields, all in the space of a couple of months. There
was a lot of labour, a lot of stress, and our costs went up
considerably, but we kept going. We invested thousands of
dollars in portable nets as the new intermediate fields couldn't
accommodate permanent nets. This meant that before every
game nets had to be brought to the field and set up, then taken
down and brought back after the game was over. The labour was
mainly Board members and families.

Each time we moved we did work on the fields, we fixed them up,
we repaired and seeded. The labour was again mainly Board
members and families.

There was a lot of tension. Some of the judgment calls were
difficult. There was a lot of physical labour. All of the fatigue
added up.

All these factors worked together in our decision. If we were
convinced that keeping Concord running was the best thing for
the kids and soccer in general we probably would have kept
going. Given that some of us believe that St. Catharines,
including our Concord kids, would be better served by fewer clubs
in any event-that the demographics of the North end suggest
fewer clubs would operate more economically- that the Board is
feeling "Board Fatigue"-and that there are other options available
for our Concord kids, we feel that shutting Concord down is the
best decision for everyone.

Board members with kids who still play will move to one of the
other clubs. Those of us without soccer aged kids will miss our
nights on the field. Soccer will continue however. Concord will
not.

We will keep the Facebook page open for the next few months in
case people have questions. We will be happy to give suggestions
about other options for playing soccer.

All the best.

John Lefurgey-President, Concord Soccer Club