So many sports teams in New Canaan use the town’s playing fields—including increasingly diversified and popular rec, private and multi-town travel programs—that it’s hard to accommodate every group seeking time under the lights in the evening, officials say.
The difficulty is exacerbated with shorter days in the fall, according to members of a Board of Selectmen-appointed panel responsible for oversight of youth sports in town.
The Water Tower fields at New Canaan High School. Credit: Terry Dinan
For example, the dads who coach in the youth football and flag football programs often can’t get to New Canaan High School’s fields until after work, about 6 p.m., less than one hour before sunset, Recreation Director Steve Benko said during Monday’s meeting of the Youth Sports Committee. That its coaches are dads gives a football program less flexibility than, say, the New Canaan Soccer Association teams, which are coached by professionals with more availability earlier in the day, Benko said.
“We cannot accommodate their [the NCSA’s] whole program” after dark, Benko said during the meeting, held in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department. Benko is a nonvoting member of the committee, which is seeking more parity in playing time among youth sports as well as a fully transparent, standardized system by which the private nonprofit groups that operate most of New Canaan’s youth sports programs contribute to playing field upkeep and upgrades.
During the meeting, committee member Sally Campbell— who also serves as chairman of the Park & Recreation Commission—said that she would like to see soccer, as an “in-season” sport, get playing time in the evenings on the Orchard Field at Waveny.
Told that football as well as a travel softball program use that field, Campbell said: “I thought we were trying to accommodate in-season sports. That was our focus. Softball is out of season.”
Told that soccer has received extra playing time on Dunning, that many of the softball-playing girls are multi-sport athletes and that there’s a practical problem with the lighted Orchard Field in that it cannot fit more than one 50-by-80-foot soccer pitch (compared to three over by Farm Road), Campbell said, “I guess I’m disappointed because we have been talking for years to try and get [the NCSA] on the Orchard Field.”
Fall can be an especially tricky season to accommodate all the youth sports in New Canaan on fields that have lights—mostly at Dunning and nearby fields in Waveny and on high school grounds up toward Lapham Community Center.
Benko during an interview after the meeting estimated off the top of his head that 275 kids play tackle football, 205 flag, 220 rec soccer, several hundred NCSA, 120 fall baseball, 30 softball and 120 field hockey. The figures don’t include popular fall youth lacrosse programs.
Benko said during the meeting that although the town doesn’t bill back each sports program for light usage—in other words, there’s no structure in place for allocating wattage based on evening field use—that the town has saved money under a new system that switches lights on or off based on when teams are using them rather than a regular timer.
Using soccer as an example, Campbell said it’s the committee’s job to ensure equal playing time, including under the lights, across all sports.
“We are trying to pretty much have parity, access to things for all groups,” she said. “It’s not only making sure they are reporting [financial statements] right but also being treated the same, and giving the same access as others, and that was one of our goals, was to try to get them [the NCSA] more lighted space.”
So by Sally Campbell’s logic, there should be no problem having baseball and lacrosse games in the spring and summer on the fields at Waveny that are usually used for soccer, because soccer is a fall sport.