The Sudbury Athletic Soccer Club is celebrating their tenth anniversary in the Sudbury Regional Competitive Soccer League (SRCSL) and, God willing, they plan on celebrating many more successful years down the road. The key to accomplishing this goal lies in establishing their youth program, according to one of the directors of the club.
“I think at the youth level, if you do have a competitive team, it allows the best players to play at their ability so it helps their skills,” says Dino Moretta, also a player and coach with the Athletic first division team. “It also helps the recreational leagues because it takes out the elite players and allows the truly recreational players to touch the ball and lets them have more fun.”
Moretta’s personal goal for the club is to build a young team that can eventually play at the Ontario Youth Soccer League (OYSL) level, the top caliber youth soccer league in the province. “Whether it’s a reality or not, I don’t know, but I’d like to try and do that,” he says.
The club started its youth program back in 2004 with a single U-10 team. Last year, they had doubled the number of U-10 squads and added a U-12 group. Moretta indicates that the club did try to start a U-11 team last year and that all the players were in place, but there were just not enough coaches to go around. That’s one area he hopes to address this off-season.
“What we need is dedicated coaches and moreso ex-players or current players,” says Moretta, who is also the treasurer of the Sudbury Regional Soccer Association (SRSA) and sits on the board of directors for the SRCSL and the Sudbury Soccer Centre. “A lot of the coaches right now are parents of the kids and the league just does not have enough coaches that used to play.”
He encourages anyone who is interested in coaching, whether it’s for his club or any other, to be proactive and call upon the local clubs to get involved. “I just want to see soccer in Sudbury expand,” he says. “We have enough players. We’ve put some kids on provincial teams in the last few years. We just need more coaches.”
Being a coach himself, he believes there’s a big payoff and sense of accomplishment for any coach, being able to see the kids improving every year and at the same time, helping to guide them in their daily lives. Although Moretta is unsure if the club will be able to come out with a U-11 team next year, he points out that the club would ideally include a team at every age category.
No matter what happens next year though, he says the Athletic Club will definitely feature at least one U-10 team and hopefully a U-12 crew as well. This past season, the Carlot Etc. U-10 squad finished second in the league with only two losses, while the club's remaining U-10 team, Sudbury Bayshore, won the league title and playoffs.
Sudbury’s only U-12 competitive boys soccer team plays under the club banner as well and although they were required to play against older competitors in the U-13 division, they still managed to keep most of their games close. The club also has a Premier Division team, which was resurrected last year after the team was forced to fold.
They struggled during the year, having to piece together a roster comprised of only five returning players and a mixture of assorted athletes. The Sudbury Athletic First division team finished by capturing the Dagostino Cup for the second straight year and garnered third place in league standings.
Also playing under the umbrella of the SASC was a team out of Elliot Lake. Moretta explains that the Elliot Lake team needed a club to affiliate with, so the Athletic allowed them to play as an affiliate. They out-of-town contingent ended up in fourth place and made the playoffs in only their second year in the league.
All and all, it was a pretty successful year for the club and Moretta hopes for more of the same next year. As far as the U-10 team is concerned, he plans on having them practice year-round to help develop a unit capable of competing at the OYSL level. He also plans on putting in a First division and Second division team to play indoor soccer, another opportunity to develop the Sudbury-area players over a 12-month period.
Ultimately, Moretta believes that what sets his club apart from the others is their commitment to promoting a family atmosphere that is open to anyone striving for soccer excellence. “We’re not ethnically based,” he says. “The Sudbury Athletic Club was founded on the basis of playing high-quality soccer and we really stress sportsmanship and fair play, both on and off the field."
The club was founded in 1996 when a handful of recreational soccer team players came together in the hopes of playing competitively. These days, they have a board that decides which youth competitive teams it will become involved with. The original orchestraters of the club include Moretta himself, Gianni Vigna, Marty Otten as well as the current president of the club, Ron Menard.
“The goal of the Sudbury Athletic Soccer Club is to offer a forum where soccer may be enjoyed and celebrated with a high level of integrity,” Menard notes. “My main goal is to make sure everyone gets along and goes home in a good mood.” He believes that the true success of a club is not necessarily measured by team wins or losses, but rather the positive attitude they play with and the camaraderie they have with each other.
“In my mind, you’re neither a measure of your successes nor your failures,” he says. “In five years from now, nobody’s going to remember who won or lost. It’s all about the camaraderie and the attitudes.”
