{"id":23589,"date":"2019-04-18T12:47:51","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T16:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23589"},"modified":"2019-04-18T12:48:01","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T16:48:01","slug":"aurora-soccer-club-celebrates-65-years-with-renewed-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-soccer-club-celebrates-65-years-with-renewed-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Soccer Club celebrates 65 years with renewed vision"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\nBrock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Aurora Soccer Club is celebrating its\n65th<\/sup>\nanniversary with new vigour and a new vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founding members Benny Steenhorst and\nDavid Geering were honoured at Town Hall last week with Aurora\u2019s Excellence in\nSports Award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the presentation was also a chance for\nthe Aurora Soccer Club (ASC), which calls Industrial Parkway South\u2019s Highland\nPark home, to outline its vision for the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have officially become old age\npensioners,\u201d said the ASC\u2019s Martin Ambrose on their milestone sixty-fifth\nbirthday. \u201cThe big news is we have done a lot of revitalization [and under the\ntutelage of Councillor John Gallo] we have built a business plan over the last\nfive years which has allowed us to take a look at where we\u2019re going to take\nthis club and how we integrate ourselves in the community over the next five to\nten years. You\u2019re going to see a lot more sports, social and charitable and\ncultural endeavours coming out of the soccer club as we move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps one of the biggest examples of\nthis coming forward is a grand plan for an Oktoberfest celebration at Highland\nPark on October 5, which will include a 12-hour program anticipating between\n1,500 and 2,000 attendees for good beer and live music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs we look forward to the long-term\u2026we\nare working with Aurora Youth Soccer on this to make sure we\u2019re not standing on\neach other\u2019s toes, putting that aside to make sure we\u2019re collaborating on how\nwe ensure we get everything from the kids to the old people on the field of\nplay and getting them involved in the social integration the club offers,\u201d said\nMr. Ambrose. \u201cOur sweet spot really is anything over the age of 18, but\ngenerally speaking, when you look at the demographic of the Town, that is kind\nof 30 \u2013 55 \u2013 that is the majority of our playing membership in that sweet\nspot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With an eye towards membership\nsustainability, Mr. Ambrose said they have doubled the size of their playing\nmembership from last year, going from 350 registered members to over 700\nplaying members actively registered with the Ontario Soccer Association. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of this membership of 700, there\nare many more who aren\u2019t registered and simply come by the ASC for a game or\ntwo of pickup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[Our membership] stretches as far as\nBradford, southeast Richmond Hill, over to Schomberg, and over to Mount\nAlbert,\u201d he said. \u201cAlmost 70 per cent of our players come from Aurora and we\u2019re\ntrying to make this sustainable, something we, as a Town, can be proud of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[In recent years] we have also doubled\nthe size of our over-45s, which is predominantly over 50s and over 60s,\npretending they\u2019re young! What that should tell us, as a community, is that\nwhile we\u2019re aging, we need to be able to offer these programs to people also\nso, one, they keep the social interaction, and that [is important to] staying\nhealthy, and, two, they get to have a little bit of exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether it is growing their membership, or\nbringing a bit of Oktoberfest to Aurora, Mr. Ambrose said everything the ASC\ndoes is done with an eye of charity and civicmindedness. They have been\nparticular supporters of the Heart & Stroke Foundation and Southlake\nRegional Health Centre in recent years and, this year, they are joining forces\nwith the local chapters of Special Olympics for a unique game on May 10. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe now have collaboration agreements with\n<\/p>\n\n\n

[both Aurora and Newmarket]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

organizations and the purpose of that is to make\nsure we don\u2019t leave anybody out on the edge of being able to play sport within\nthe community and they can feel involved,\u201d said Mr. Ambrose.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the presentation, Council\nmembers shared their enthusiasm for the ASC\u2019s plans going forward, responding\nto Mr. Ambrose\u2019s calls to work with municipal staff on how they can expand and\nupdate their current facilities to meet the demands of the \u201ctwenty-first\ncentury.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Aurora Soccer Club is the best-kept secret in this Town,\u201d said\nCouncillor Gallo. \u201cThe amount of work that the Club has done over many, many\nyears and the tens of thousands of dollars they have given back to the\ncommunity is extraordinary and we should be yelling from the rooftops the\namount of work they have done. I am so proud of the work they have done,\nparticularly recently \u2013 and just watch what they do. They\u2019re going to achieve\nso many great things.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir The Aurora Soccer Club is celebrating its 65th anniversary with new vigour and a new vision. Founding members Benny Steenhorst and David Geering were honoured at Town Hall last week with Aurora\u2019s Excellence in Sports Award. But the presentation was also a chance for the Aurora Soccer Club (ASC), which calls Industrial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/2019-04-18-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-68t","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 01:31:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}