If you haven’t checked out the Sports section this week, you might be surprised to learn that Santa Maria is in dire need of soccer fields. Yeah, it was news to me, too. I have to plead ignorance on the subject of soccer, which apparently every other country on the planet calls football. What’s up with that?
All Seinfeldian joking aside, the One Community Action Coalition is organizing with local clubs and teams to help get a large soccer complex going in the city. Well, soccer takes up a good amount of land if you want several fields of play in one location, and real estate ain’t cheap.
But the thought is that more soccer fields means more after school activities for at risk youth, not to mention the numerous teams and clubs locally that are constantly competing for practice space. It is such a problem that the Santa Maria City Council set soccer and sports fields as one of its five longtime goals.
But really, does it warrant being a citywide longterm goal? It can’t be that much of a problem. Well, it is apparently.
After voicing my own skepticism on the matter, I got a serious volley (does that term apply to soccer?) of information from a co-worker. This particular colleague plays a lot of soccer, which explains the muddy cleat marks everywhere in the office, and regaled me with the many issues that soccer teams face on the Central Coast, not just Santa Maria.
There are hardly any public fields to play at, they explained, so many teams have to pay to play at various privately owned fields. And the public fields that do exist are utilized by other field sport teams, so the grass is overworked. When you add California’s native pocket gopher to the mix, it’s not surprising why many young athletes roll their ankles, or worse. Nothing puts the kybosh on a promising career in sports like a broken ankle.
And in the middle of Santa Maria, the only real public place where there’s room to hold multiple soccer games is at Minami Park, my coworker explained while reaching a crescendo and declaring, “and it’s a freaking water basin!” So yeah, Minami Park is water logged a good part of the year, either ankle high with water or a mushy mud pit. No fun.
This isn’t a new issue in the area either. In 2006, the Planning Commission considered a proposal, which allotted 80 acres between Bradley Road and Windmoor and Amethyst Streets for mixed use. This would have allowed 29 acres to be developed as residential and commercial buildings, with the rest going to the Central Coast Soccer Foundation, which wanted to build a supersized soccer complex.
The proponents then were saying what they are now, which is that such a facility could make Santa Maria a sports location, spurring the local economy. Unfortunately for the soccer fans, Orcutt’s anti-development contingent came out in full force, airing their concerns, which included traffic and environmental impacts.
Ultimately, the project didn’t pan out, and now, 10 years later, the community faces the same problem. As the Cat Stevens song goes, “where will the children play?”
But for organizers with the One Community Action Coalition and local soccer clubs, there is hope in seeing the City Council adopt soccer fields as a long term. GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAALLLLLL!
The Canary avoids big, flying balls as much as possible. Shoot her a message at canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 4-11, 2016.
