LAKELAND - With their outdoor season wrapped up for this season, hundreds of young soccer players from across the Lakeland region will soon be taking their game indoors. Registration for the indoor season is now taking place at soccer associations across the Lakeland.
Josh Phillips, the president of the Lakeland District Soccer Association, said indoor practices for clubs typically get underway just after Thanksgiving, with league play starting up in earlier November.
Playing the game in indoor facilities during a considerably longer season, Phillips continued, is essential to developing soccer players in the district.
While the outdoor game is played 11v11 in a large space and lasts for 90 minutes, with substitutions at stoppages and an offside rule, Phillips explained, the indoor version is played 6v6 in a much smaller space and is 50 minutes long in duration with substitutions on the fly and no offside rule.
This format for indoor soccer, he said, means that players are getting considerably more ball touches on the pitch per game.
“This typically leads to more well-rounded players than those who only play outdoor soccer,” Phillips told Lakeland This Week. “The vast majority of our players that end up moving on to play college soccer have played both indoor and outdoor soccer consistently.”
With indoor soccer being crucial for young players to keep their skills sharp throughout the long, cold months of winter, one may be inclined to assume that large numbers of kids would be taking up the indoor version of the beautiful game during a time of the year when activities such as hockey dominate the sports landscape.
However, according to Phillips, this isn’t the case.
Phillips said while the Lakeland District Soccer Association has seen tremendous growth in registrations for its indoor programs over the past few years, the number of kids signing up to play outdoors is double that. For the busy 2024 outdoor season, he said, there were more than 2,000 registrants from across the Lakeland district, the organization’s highest total in recent years.
Indoor spaces in demand
The greatest barrier to the soccer district’s indoor program, Phillips stated, is the lack of appropriate facilities.
When it comes to indoor pitches, not all communities within the soccer district are created equally. While Bonnyville, Cold Lake, and Lac La Biche have boarded facilities-and are able to host major indoor events during the winter months such as the Lakeland Cup-others, including St. Paul and Vermilion, run their programs out of school gyms.
“That is a massive competitive disadvantage over the communities that do have an indoor facility,” he said. “Those communities also miss out on hosting league games and cannot host Lakeland Cup, which is another disadvantage to their programs.”
For this indoor season, Phillips said, all league games will be held on weekends, with Bonnyville and Lac La Biche both hosting two league weekends and Cold Lake hosting three.
Lakeland Cup
Indoor soccer teams from across the district will also be heading to Cold Lake in February for the annual Lakeland Cup. This tournament determines which teams will be attending provincials. This past February, the Lakeland Cup took place at Lac La Biche’s Bold Center and included 250 players on 17 teams.
After the provincials finish up in mid-March, Phillips said, most clubs wrap up their season and take a short break as they prepare to head back outdoors.
“The outdoor season will begin again in late-April, so that will give our clubs about a month to transition from the indoor season to the outdoor season,” he stated.
More information about registration for the 2024-2025 indoor soccer season, can be found on the Lakeland District Soccer Association website.
