Community Better Challenge – Cochrane SPARkLErs Series Interview #2
Featuring Scott Ansell
Topic: Soccer in Cochrane
AUDIO FILE ONLY
Welcome back to the second in our series of SPARkLERS (Sport Physical Activity Recreation LEaders)! Our goal here at Sport4Life Cochrane is to create partnerships and help sport organizations reach a wider audience and to highlight all of the amazing staff and volunteers who make the sport community in Cochrane so strong.
We are here today with Scott Ansell, the Director of Cochrane Minor Soccer.
Hi Scott, tell us a little bit about yourself, how long you’ve been here, and about your job.
I’ve only been in Cochrane since September and I still currently live in Calgary but we are in the market to be able to move to Cochrane. I’ve been in Calgary for 2 years and in Manitoba for 9 years. My family is still in the U.K., my fiancee is from Winnipeg, and we have our dog who is a tripod.
I’ve been working in soccer for 7 years now full time. I’m very happy to be able to do what I love. I’m incredibly passionate about the game and grew up playing soccer. Being from England soccer is everywhere, just like hockey in Canada.
Tell us a little bit about Cochrane Minor Soccer, what makes it unique and what are your goals with it.
One of our big goals is to try to engage and to try to get as many people as we can playing the game. The biggest way to create excitement for the game is to create passion for the game. That includes having those games for the younger kids and making sure that they love coming to soccer and they want to keep coming back. That is the key, it was a long term play development about 10 years ago and we are starting to see the fruits of that labour with the Canada men’s team going to the world cup. They will also be at the 2026 world cup as we are co-hosting it. It’s the strong foundation at the roots that’s starting to funnel up to the professional team.
At Cochrane Minor Soccer we’re no different. We are starting to go through the licensing process to try to become a licensed club which means that we are meeting certain levels and practices and a big part of that is that we are meeting Canada Soccer's Grassroots standards of being a safe, inclusive, fun club. That involves running programs with licensed coaches. Knowing we have a clear direction of where we are going and having the best program that we can for this town. Cochrane is a town and it has it’s own culture and that’s something that excites me most is having something that can grow into the town's culture. Putting on the jersey means having hometown pride. We want to keep the kids engaged and have more people playing for longer. Even into adults, we would like to have men and women playing for the rest of their lives instead of being done at a young age.
Can you pinpoint some of the biggest changes that you’ve seen in the last 8-10 years that have helps kids stay in the program longer?
Not having full soccer games at 4 and 5. It’s important to give the game to the child instead of the parent and making sure that we are doing things for the children and not the adult. (Editor’s Note: Check out this video where a group of adults experience what it is like to be kids playing on a full size pitch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9Pc1vf_tlg)
Changing the culture around that in that we are prioritizing what the child wants instead of what the parents may want. Now, with that there are a lot of challenges that come with that and we are aware that our program has it’s challenges right now, with some parents that want to see their children playing games and that’s all they do but what we know is that is a short term method that doesn’t keep kids engaged long term. They don’t develop all their skills.. Only some of the kids really enjoy it but others do not. Our numbers have gone up 40% which is a great success and we think it is due to the fact that we’ve been changing the way we run our program. We have had a lot of positive feedback especially from educators. It’s not 100% support, you’re always going to have those people that don’t agree and that’s fine we understand that.
How has Cochrane Minor Soccer been impacted with COVID-19?
Incredibly difficult time for everyone and sports got impacted severely. One thing we found that helped is just staying connected to the kids and we did a lot of online stuff. Just trying to connect with the child and connect them to each other. A big part that Canada soccer and the way that we are going in as well is building up the social side of the sport. They’re learning how to share, communicate, and listen. These are really big skills that we feel with our change of program it’s important to just enjoy it and have fun and we have designed our program to do that. I think coming back from COVID-19 that’s a really good opportunity for us to just connect as many kids with eachother. At the beginning it was overwhelming for kids to be with so many other kids, we would have around 150 kids on the field at one time. So in the beginning we had some parents on the field helping to get their kids comfortable and now the parents are on the sidelines because the kids are more comfortable. That’s something that COVID-19 did help with. And like you said we might not be all the way through it but we are on our way forward.
Why do you feel the collaborative piece of sport, within organizations, is so important and a little bit about partnerships about engaging more girls and women in the sport.
I think we have a duty in the community to keep kids engaged and active in the community and I’m also responsible to help soccer, and sport in general, grow in the community. We have just started a partnership with the Boys and Girls Club and Sport4Life helping us build into that partnership. We had our first session on Tuesday and it was incredible to see the enthusiasm of the kids. I went there I saw the kids and the instructors playing hockey and I think that’s awesome because they’re out there playing a sport, no matter which sport. After the session we left our pop up goals and some soccer balls because they didn’t have them so we donated that equipment to them so that they can continue to play. That’s a key part about growing our sport, if we want more kids to play we need to give them more ways so that they are able to do that. Playing sports for a couple hours a week is only going to get you so far, the true development comes from what you’re doing outside of the organization. We want to create more opportunities for kids to just be active. We want to build the those relationships where we can help sport grow in the community outside of the organizations. We want sport to be accessible where there are no barriers, there’s just kids going out and playing.
We have 37 coaches to help with our program and 75% are females, a lot of which are part of the club, 16-17 years old, but we also have many 18-20 year olds that used to be in the program that want to get back into the program again. We want our coaches to be able to get higher into the organization of soccer or in sport.
What is 1 wish that you would have that would allow sport to impact kids in a more positive way?
If we had all the money in the world it would be to build something exciting for the kids, like a soccer cage (an enclosed space to play soccer:). It would be a dedicated place for kids to just be able to go in and play with no adult structure or rules, like the skate park or Bicycle track - a place where they can be creative and confident where it is about just being a kid, making up games, learning how to communicate and problem solve. Rethinking about what types of facilities we would need to engage kids to actually go and play soccer on their own time.
For the Community Better Challenge what would you do with the money if we win?
We would develop a facility, like the skate park, where you’re there for fun and you’re there with lots of other kids.
Tell us a little bit about what you’ll be doing for Try It Day on Sunday, June 12th.
We’re excited that we get to be there for that! We’ve heard a lot of positive feedback from previous years. We’re excited to be able to meet lots of new kids that maybe haven’t tried soccer before. We will be giving them a little flavour about what we’re all about. It’ll be fun, action packed, and definitely game based. We ensure that they’ll always have or be around a ball so that players are always engaged and they’re always moving. We are excited to be able to meet different kids and just showing them what soccer is all about.
https://www.cochranewolvesfc.ca
https://www.facebook.com/CochraneMinorSoccer
Topic: Soccer in Cochrane
AUDIO FILE ONLY
Welcome back to the second in our series of SPARkLERS (Sport Physical Activity Recreation LEaders)! Our goal here at Sport4Life Cochrane is to create partnerships and help sport organizations reach a wider audience and to highlight all of the amazing staff and volunteers who make the sport community in Cochrane so strong.
We are here today with Scott Ansell, the Director of Cochrane Minor Soccer.
Hi Scott, tell us a little bit about yourself, how long you’ve been here, and about your job.
I’ve only been in Cochrane since September and I still currently live in Calgary but we are in the market to be able to move to Cochrane. I’ve been in Calgary for 2 years and in Manitoba for 9 years. My family is still in the U.K., my fiancee is from Winnipeg, and we have our dog who is a tripod.
I’ve been working in soccer for 7 years now full time. I’m very happy to be able to do what I love. I’m incredibly passionate about the game and grew up playing soccer. Being from England soccer is everywhere, just like hockey in Canada.
Tell us a little bit about Cochrane Minor Soccer, what makes it unique and what are your goals with it.
One of our big goals is to try to engage and to try to get as many people as we can playing the game. The biggest way to create excitement for the game is to create passion for the game. That includes having those games for the younger kids and making sure that they love coming to soccer and they want to keep coming back. That is the key, it was a long term play development about 10 years ago and we are starting to see the fruits of that labour with the Canada men’s team going to the world cup. They will also be at the 2026 world cup as we are co-hosting it. It’s the strong foundation at the roots that’s starting to funnel up to the professional team.
At Cochrane Minor Soccer we’re no different. We are starting to go through the licensing process to try to become a licensed club which means that we are meeting certain levels and practices and a big part of that is that we are meeting Canada Soccer's Grassroots standards of being a safe, inclusive, fun club. That involves running programs with licensed coaches. Knowing we have a clear direction of where we are going and having the best program that we can for this town. Cochrane is a town and it has it’s own culture and that’s something that excites me most is having something that can grow into the town's culture. Putting on the jersey means having hometown pride. We want to keep the kids engaged and have more people playing for longer. Even into adults, we would like to have men and women playing for the rest of their lives instead of being done at a young age.
Can you pinpoint some of the biggest changes that you’ve seen in the last 8-10 years that have helps kids stay in the program longer?
Not having full soccer games at 4 and 5. It’s important to give the game to the child instead of the parent and making sure that we are doing things for the children and not the adult. (Editor’s Note: Check out this video where a group of adults experience what it is like to be kids playing on a full size pitch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9Pc1vf_tlg)
Changing the culture around that in that we are prioritizing what the child wants instead of what the parents may want. Now, with that there are a lot of challenges that come with that and we are aware that our program has it’s challenges right now, with some parents that want to see their children playing games and that’s all they do but what we know is that is a short term method that doesn’t keep kids engaged long term. They don’t develop all their skills.. Only some of the kids really enjoy it but others do not. Our numbers have gone up 40% which is a great success and we think it is due to the fact that we’ve been changing the way we run our program. We have had a lot of positive feedback especially from educators. It’s not 100% support, you’re always going to have those people that don’t agree and that’s fine we understand that.
How has Cochrane Minor Soccer been impacted with COVID-19?
Incredibly difficult time for everyone and sports got impacted severely. One thing we found that helped is just staying connected to the kids and we did a lot of online stuff. Just trying to connect with the child and connect them to each other. A big part that Canada soccer and the way that we are going in as well is building up the social side of the sport. They’re learning how to share, communicate, and listen. These are really big skills that we feel with our change of program it’s important to just enjoy it and have fun and we have designed our program to do that. I think coming back from COVID-19 that’s a really good opportunity for us to just connect as many kids with eachother. At the beginning it was overwhelming for kids to be with so many other kids, we would have around 150 kids on the field at one time. So in the beginning we had some parents on the field helping to get their kids comfortable and now the parents are on the sidelines because the kids are more comfortable. That’s something that COVID-19 did help with. And like you said we might not be all the way through it but we are on our way forward.
Why do you feel the collaborative piece of sport, within organizations, is so important and a little bit about partnerships about engaging more girls and women in the sport.
I think we have a duty in the community to keep kids engaged and active in the community and I’m also responsible to help soccer, and sport in general, grow in the community. We have just started a partnership with the Boys and Girls Club and Sport4Life helping us build into that partnership. We had our first session on Tuesday and it was incredible to see the enthusiasm of the kids. I went there I saw the kids and the instructors playing hockey and I think that’s awesome because they’re out there playing a sport, no matter which sport. After the session we left our pop up goals and some soccer balls because they didn’t have them so we donated that equipment to them so that they can continue to play. That’s a key part about growing our sport, if we want more kids to play we need to give them more ways so that they are able to do that. Playing sports for a couple hours a week is only going to get you so far, the true development comes from what you’re doing outside of the organization. We want to create more opportunities for kids to just be active. We want to build the those relationships where we can help sport grow in the community outside of the organizations. We want sport to be accessible where there are no barriers, there’s just kids going out and playing.
We have 37 coaches to help with our program and 75% are females, a lot of which are part of the club, 16-17 years old, but we also have many 18-20 year olds that used to be in the program that want to get back into the program again. We want our coaches to be able to get higher into the organization of soccer or in sport.
What is 1 wish that you would have that would allow sport to impact kids in a more positive way?
If we had all the money in the world it would be to build something exciting for the kids, like a soccer cage (an enclosed space to play soccer:). It would be a dedicated place for kids to just be able to go in and play with no adult structure or rules, like the skate park or Bicycle track - a place where they can be creative and confident where it is about just being a kid, making up games, learning how to communicate and problem solve. Rethinking about what types of facilities we would need to engage kids to actually go and play soccer on their own time.
For the Community Better Challenge what would you do with the money if we win?
We would develop a facility, like the skate park, where you’re there for fun and you’re there with lots of other kids.
Tell us a little bit about what you’ll be doing for Try It Day on Sunday, June 12th.
We’re excited that we get to be there for that! We’ve heard a lot of positive feedback from previous years. We’re excited to be able to meet lots of new kids that maybe haven’t tried soccer before. We will be giving them a little flavour about what we’re all about. It’ll be fun, action packed, and definitely game based. We ensure that they’ll always have or be around a ball so that players are always engaged and they’re always moving. We are excited to be able to meet different kids and just showing them what soccer is all about.
https://www.cochranewolvesfc.ca
https://www.facebook.com/CochraneMinorSoccer
