A new partnership between the Seaway Valley Soccer Club (SVSC) and Atlético Ottawa will bring new experiences and opportunities to soccer players and coaches in Cornwall and SDG.
The SVSC was officially founded in 2008 with minor soccer association roots going back to 1974. As a volunteer run and led organization, their resources are relatively limited. In the past, local players who wanted professional level training had to travel to bigger cities like Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal for soccer camps.
With the birth of the Canadian Premier League, the new professional league founded in 2017, we now have more professional clubs in Canada. Atlético Ottawa’s mission is to grow soccer at the grassroots level in the Capital Region and beyond.
As part of this partnership, soccer players and their coaches from Cornwall will be able to travel to TD Place to see high level games. Atlético Ottawa provides a Club Day where they section off a piece of the stadium and allow groups to go up as a club, watch one of the games together and they also provide a set of experiences as part of that day.
“They allow kids to play on the field at halftime, walk out with the players, stand with them for the national anthem, that kind of stuff,” shared Ed Irvine, SVSC’s Player Development Lead, “Really cool for some of our younger kids to get involved in that and see what a professional does and what a professional game is actually like.”
To support the SVSC’s growth and development, Atlético provides a lot of access to their resources and professional expertise. They allow clubs to go to training sessions with their coaches and also bring coaches down to Cornwall.
“An enormous amount of coaching development is part of the relationship at relatively low expense. We don’t have to necessarily pay for that so that’s huge for us,” explained Irvine, “Since we run on volunteer coaches it’s sometimes hard to get that kind help and ultimately bring back better expertise for our kids and athletes here.”
One of the most exciting announcements coming out of this new partnership is that Atlético is bringing their summer camp to Cornwall from August 10 – 14. Atlético Ottawa is owned by Atlético Madrid, a huge club in Spain. As part of this summer camp, they will bring over coaches from Spain to train players right here in Cornwall at our Kinsmen Field.
“What we were looking for with Atlético Ottawa is another opportunity for our athletes to get identified,” said Irvine, “As a partner they give us access to their ID camps, so we can send some of our top athletes to go be ID’d on more of a high-level track. It’s often hard to get that type of ID outside of major cities so it’s another benefit for us.”
While the SVSC has had some professional soccer players as coaches, including Taylor Beitz and Christina Julien, this partnership will continue to help promising soccer players in Cornwall reach the next level.
