It’s only a matter of time before a soccer-playing child is badly cut, says the president of the North End Recreation Centre.
Barb Kukko said they’ve been forced to relocate one soccer field already because of an inordinate amount of discarded glass pushing up through the soil, remnants, she believes, of a long-ago covered-over landfill that used to reside on the Huron Avenue property.
Kukko said the only solution is to dig up the field, remove as much of the material as possible, then properly line it to avoid future occurrences.
“I don’t see any other choice. When the play structures were put in they had to dig it up about 18 inches and haul it away,” Kukko said.
“Then they put a landscape tarp on it and filled it up with some gravel. I don’t see any other possibility but digging the whole area up and doing the same thing.”
Kukko acknowledged the city, which owns the property, did send out crews twice last year to rake the field and collect any glass or other foreign objects they found.
But with the arrival of spring, the glass is back.
In a matter of minutes on Thursday Kukko and Adam Cousins, the convener of the North End Soccer Association, lined the bottom of a scrub bucket with hunks of glass, small shards and even a rusty nail.
“Several parents pulled their kids out of the soccer program because they didn’t want their children playing on glass. Who does?” Kukko said.
“So we ended up moving the fields to the back. Every day we can keep doing the same thing. We’ve been doing it for years already and it will just keep on. Every spring the frost pushes it up and it pops out and resurfaces. It’s a never-ending problem.”
Cousins said the soccer program has dropped to 300 children from a high of 400 or so, and though there are other factors contributing to the decline, the glass has always been a concern for players, coaches and parents alike.
The field in question, situated adjacent to the North End Recreation Centre and the pad for the winter-only ice rinks, has been left out of the soccer schedule equation at different times.
“But it hasn’t always been possible,” Cousins said, “so we’ve to sometimes move smaller kids, age three to four, onto this field, when we’ve run out of space. But we’re trying to keep them all away because it’s always been a safety issue.”
Cousins said he can’t say definitively whether or not players have been cut by the glass in the past.
“There have been players who have been cut on the field. I don’t think it was by this glass specifically. There have been other dangers in the ground though, in other areas. It’s kind of a hazardous area for a soccer field,” he said.
A spokesperson from the city’s parks and recreation department was not immediately available for comment for this story.
The centre is slated to undergo several upgrades in coming years, including the installation of a permanent ice rink, a splash pad, a beach volleyball court and several pathways.
