Queen's West Campus noise exemption request (Updated)

Over the last several months, there has been an ongoing issues with local Kingston residents near the Queen's West Campus turf field, located out near Richardson Stadium (corner of Sir John A MacDonald Blvd and Johnson St).

This Tuesday (March 4), Kingston City Council (as part of their agenda) will be receiving a recommendation from City staff as to how an exemption for the noise by-law should be applied to the field.

Local talent tagged for TAG

The Ontario Soccer Association and the Referee Development Department announced the leaders for the newly formed Technical Advisory Group (TAG) today. This group is designed to replace the current Instructors and Assessors Advisory Groups for referee development in the province with an eye toward creating more inclusivity and succession planning.

The main goal of this new group was to be a counterpart to the OSA's Technical Advisory Committee, which advises the board of directors on all matters soccer related, but seems to concentrate more on the player and coach development stream.

Bill Orme

Bill and Eden Orme
(courtesy KLBC)

I'm taking today to do something a bit atypical for this blog, specifically to honour my first ever soccer coach, Bill Orme.

When I first began playing "organized" soccer with the Kingston Youth Soccer Association back in the day, I often played at the McCullough Park fields here in Kingston, which was fairly close to home. My best friend and neighbour Mark Staveley was playing and his dad, Howard Staveley, was one of the two coaches, along with a co-worker of his, Bill Orme. Bill's two sons also played for the team, Will and Steve (and even though Steve was a year or two younger than the rest of us, he definitely wasn't out of place on our motley crew).

As is often the case with youth house league teams, most people were played in positions they disliked horribly (I was played as an outside left striker in modern parlance) and there were one or two great players on the team (I was not one of them), Bill and Howard managed to instill a love of the game in me at a young age, something I'm certain that both of them since regretted!