Caboto Soccer Club’s nomadic days over after deal with school board
Members of the Caboto Soccer Club finally have a place to call home after 68 seasons of a nomadic existence that saw them practise and play on fields across the city. Through a partnership announced Thursday with the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board, more than 600 club players can refer to the state-of-theart turf at Holy Names secondary school as their home field. “It sounds so great to say that this is the home of Caboto Soccer Club,” said Egidio Mosca, the club’s president. “Quite frankly, it seemed like it was an impossibility.”
Having your kids play for Caboto was an exercise in logistical gymnastics for parents with practices and games scattered at fields from Mic Mac in the west end to McHugh Park in the east end, not to mention various points in between.
“We’ve always been all over the place,” said Mosca of a club that was founded in 1951. “That’s one of the things we always suffered from is that we didn’t have a place to call home. Now with this, all that goes away.”
Now in his 20th year as club president, Mosca was quick to place a phone call to Terry Lyons, the Catholic board’s director of education, when he heard about the $1.8 million facility that opened last year.
“We envisioned something like this when we started,” Lyons said of the partnership. “It’s a cost recovery model that we’re trying to do. These things aren’t cheap to build.”
The partnership translates into 800 hours of soccer on weeknights and Saturdays, beginning Monday. Mosca said more than 40 teams will train at Holy Names’ field at least once a week and some age-level teams will play all their home games there.
The artificial turf takes weather out of the equation unless there’s lightning in the vicinity. “The last few years, we’ve had a lot of cancellations from weather,” Mosca said. City-owned fields are often closed in early spring because of wet, muddy conditions. “This gets the kids on the field more often and consistently,” Mosca said. Fifteen-year-old Gabriel Steele can’t wait to kick it around on turf. “It’s always perfect in any condition,” Steele said. “Sometimes on a grass field, the grass can be too long or when it rains it gets muddy. I’ve seen some good players get put off their game by terrible conditions. This is going to give all Caboto players an enhanced experience.”
That’s one of the things we always suffered from is that we didn’t have a place to call home.