Dillon Torindo has had a taste of professional soccer and very nearly made the cut with now-defunct FC Edmonton in the North American Soccer League.
He's now hoping to bring some of the professionalism he learned during his time there to Yellowknife.
Torindo is the mind behind Yk Galaxy, a new youth developmental soccer program set to launch this coming May with the goal being to bring a professional attitude about soccer to the city.
You may know that there's already a club program in town, that being the Yellowknife Bay Soccer Club – the Sundogs – but Torindo said his program is going to be different because he's planning on networking with clubs and academies in the south to provide more opportunities for the city's young players.
“We're going to be collaborating with more professional clubs out there and that's what makes us different from the Sundogs,” he said.
Torindo already has a crew on board to help get started with volunteers such as Bill Stirling, Garry Hubert and Aaron Hernandez, better known as Godson, people Torindo said have experience working with youth.
When things get going, Torindo is planning on having three different age groups: 6-9, 10-13 and 14-17. He's hoping to have the junior program become a feeder team for the Yk Galaxy men's team that will be competing at the national level.
“The 14-17 age group is the advanced level and we'll have them training with more advanced players,” said Torindo.
The Sundogs program has already proven to be a popular one in town with all of its teams full each season. Torindo knows that and wants to provide another option for soccer parents in town and maybe even work with the Sundogs in the future.
“We won't be part of them but maybe we could challenge the Sundogs in a tournament and give them some competition for games,” he said. “A lot of kids right now don't have teams to play on after their season is done, like the kids in the (Aurora Minor Soccer League). I want them to be in a program where they can be taught how to do things. They don't have a lot of time to learn because they're just thrown into a game for one hour. They aren't growing and I think we're damaging the kids because they aren't being given the right guidance.”
Torindo's plan is to focus on the fundamentals with passing, ball control, dribbling, positioning and shooting among the things that are part of the planned curriculum. At the end of the season, there are plans to have a tournament both in town and out of town.
What Torindo really wants is to make the program similar to the set-up of the Yellowknife Wolfpack travel team system.
“Hockey is so much more advanced than soccer is in Yellowknife,” he said. “You look at hockey and they're spending so much for registration and they're playing so many tournaments. For soccer, parents pay a couple hundred dollars and they play just once a week. The coaches change every year as well so your kid could be coached by different people every season. Maybe parents can look at this and say it's organized with track suits, bags, uniforms, they're training to be better.”
Torindo has partnered with First Mobile Sports Academy, based out of Montreal, to help launch the program and he wants to have players that one day travel with the academy to tournaments in Europe, something the academy does on a regular basis.
He also hopes some of their teams teams can come North and play in a tournament he's hoping to hold in the near future.
“Teams from Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, wherever, even the Sundogs can join in to play,” he said. “We just need a tournament in town to show that soccer is expanding.”
