The Goderich Minor Soccer League is undergoing significant re-structuring this year.

President Megan Frayne said the North Huron Soccer League has folded. St. Columban joined the Elgin Middlesex League last year and Exeter is joining them this year. In order for them to play the teams they had been playing in the past, they’re joining Elgin Middlesex this year too.

But, Frayne said Elgin Middlesex is a more structured league. One of the policies is at the younger ages, where they have fewer kids playing on smaller fields so that the players get more chances to kick the ball.

“Goderich is currently five full sized soccer fields which are 100 metres long each and that doesn’t work for any of our U-13s and under,” said Frayne. “We probably have around 350 kids that fall into those categories.”

Frayne said they’re hoping to modify the YMCA and have it as their grass roots centre where they’ll have some U-13 fields, which are a maximum length of 75 metres and three U-11 size fields, with a maximum length of 55 metres.

“Then we’ll divide the U-11 fields so that we’ll have six small fields, which we can use for our house league programs or our tykes, U-7s and U-9s,” she said.

Frayne said they’ve measured their current fields and they believe they can make it work. She says it has to be done by mid-May so they don’t have a lot of time, but she says everyone has been really helpful and they’re moving things along very quickly. She expects everything will be done when the season starts.

According to Fraye, they have a record number of players this year with about 450 kids registered and another 20 on their waiting list. She said she was talking to someone from Goderich Minor Baseball recently who said they had record number this year as well. So, she suspects there are a lot of kids who are happy to have COVID behind them and get back to normal again.