This Tuesday will see the last of our Fall and Winter leagues kicking off, and we’re already thinking ahead to summer. We lined up some of our favourite venues from the past couple of summers and are delighted to be able to offer Ottawa’s best coed soccer leagues 7-days a week over the summer months.
Last year, Carleton University was our most popular venue, with Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays outdoors on Raven Field and Mondays indoors in the Fieldhouse. This year we’ll be also be adding a fifth league (Wednesdays). The 90 minute Sunday evening games at Carleton U are usually snapped up straight away and is usually the first of the leagues to sell out. Fridays evenings see 60 minute games at the same venue. Both of these leagues will be 11 or 12 week seasons and the spring season will kick off in the first week of May followed by the summer season at the beginning of August. The same venue will see our Saturday league kicking off in early June in the popular late afternoon slot. The Saturday league will be exclusively at Carleton this year (rather than being split between Carleton and Ottawa as it was last summer).
Mondays in the Fieldhouse at Carleton were a new addition last summer, and the league proved so popular that we’ve added a second night, on Wednesdays. These leagues are indoor 60 minute games, with a single season starting in late May and running through until the end of the summer.
And just to show that we’re not taking sides in the “Panda Game” we’ll be over at Ottawa University too, on Matt Anthony Field. For those of you don’t know the “Panda Game” it was the famously intense (and boozy) match-up between the Ottawa U and Carleton U football teams, which will be reignited in 2013 when the Carleton U football team returns to the field after a 15 year absence. Anyway, that’s a bit of a digression. We were amongst the first organisations to use the newly completed turf field at Ottawa U when it opened last June, and this year we’ll be out there right from the start of May. The 60 minute leagues on Fridays and Sundays are within walking distance of the market and are sure to be popular with those teams looking to combine the sport and social aspect of their soccer.
Of course, as always we’ll be out at Louis Riel Dome, the venue where it all began for Footy Sevens, and our 90 minute indoor leagues there on Mondays and Wednesdays fill up quickly and feature some of the teams who have been with us right from the beginning. The slots are already filling up in these leagues, and early registration is advised. Two ten week seasons, with spring beginning in mid May and the summer season following in August.
Across the river in Gatineau, we’ll have both evening and afternoon Sunday leagues at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, or UQO for short. If you haven`t played at the UQO field before, you really should check it out: we think it is almost certainly the best outdoor turf field in the National Capital Region. Great turf, top of the range goals, fenced in all around and featuring two HUGE 7-a-side fields that are almost 50 yards wide, it really is a wonderful facility. The Spring league kicks off at the beginning of May and a summer season will follow in August.
Our newest venue for the upcoming summer leagues will be the Ben Franklin Dome in Nepean. We haven`t had a venue in the South of the city since we stopped using Minto field in 2010, so we are delighted to be able to add a local venue for our teams who hail from South Ottawa, Barrhaven and Riverside South. The indoor leagues will be taking place on Tuesdays and Thursdays and get underway in the middle of May.
We still have one or two more leagues to finalise: watch this space for information on women’s leagues, men’s leagues and the 3rd annual Kicking Cancer’s Butt Charity Soccer Tournament.
Hopefully we`ve got something for everyone in there, for registration, pricing and full details go to www.ottawafootysevens.com or drop us an e-mail at admin@ottawafootysevens.com.