CCAA teams dug deep to travel to championship

STORY BY PALWASHA TEMOR

Trafalgar Campus played host to the 2014 Men’s National Soccer Championship last weekend.

With eight teams from across the country gathering together to battle for the ultimate prize, Sheridan staff and students pulled out all the stops during the four-day event.

According to Jim Flack, director of athletics, the event came with a sizeable price tag.

“The base cost of the tournament was roughly $100,000, but we had some extremely generous sponsors and there are some cost-recoverable items from the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association as well as the participating schools,” Flack said.

Flack admits that overall, there was a revenue loss of between $10,000 to $30,000.

“We knew this going in,” he said. “The expense of hosting this event will be well worth the historical benefit to both Sheridan and our varsity program.”

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The event was also a costly one for participants.

For the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) team, who came all the way from Edmonton, the price to be there wasn’t cheap.

Linda Henderson, the director of athletics and recreation at NAIT estimates that the total cost for their team to be there was about $35,000 to $40,000.

“We get subsidized for our airfare, so it works out to be $500 a player. We have a roster of 20, plus our coaches, plus our delegations, so there’s about 30 of us,” Henderson said.

Henderson also mentioned that the cost of hotel rooms was around $100 a night and the rental of their coach bus cost them about $1,500 a day.

The coverage of the event was provided by Cogeco.

“We’re covering all the games. They’re all going live to our station, they’re going live over Sheridan TV and then they’re going live over the CCAA TV as well so it’s being streamed across the country,” said Joey Ricottone, producer with TV Cogeco, during the tournament, which Sheridan won.

Ricottone said it cost about $10,000 to deploy its million dollar remote broadcast truck to the tournament.

“It’s a very costly event to put on and this is why it’s important to have sponsorships from many different areas,” said Tony Silvestri, the facility coordinator of Davis Campus Athletic Centre.

Silvestri stayed at the host hotel with the eight teams because of the rules of the tournament.

“It’s part of the tournament cost to have representation in the hotel,” said Silvestri.

According to Silvestri, the Sheridan Student Union was the title sponsor for the event and was instrumental in helping out financially.

“It’s been a two-year process where we have to put in a bid first the opportunity to host the nationals rotates among the provinces, and it’s usually every five years that each individual championship comes to Ontario,” said Wayne Fish, the varsity coordinator for Sheridan Athletics.

“Then we have to put in a proposal to host to our Ontario conference and they approve it and put it forward to the national offices, in the national meetings for approval and once we get the approval we go forward and do all the work to put on the event.”

Once approved, the planning began and Fish and Ricottone started to prepare for the tournament.

Silvestri and Fish were the co-chairs for the tournament and made sure that everything was in order for the tournament from food, which Sheridan provided, helping score keepers and helping with the balls, amongst many other things.

“Myself and Wayne Fish ensure that all our committees and sub-committees all did their duty,” said Silvestri.