August 27, 2009
NAIT awarded 2010 CCAA Soccer Championships
August 27, 2009 - NAIT athletic leaders are getting an early start preparing for the 2010 Canadian college soccer championships. The Ooks were recently approved to host the event which will see approximately 275 of the best college soccer players in the country hit the pitch November 10-13, 2010.
“We went after the national championships because NAIT wants to be a leader in intercollegiate athletics,” says NAIT’s Athletics Coordinator Gregg Meropoulis. “We see hosting the 2010 CCAA Soccer Championships as a great way to expose NAIT, our athletics program and our NAIT Ooks Soccer teams to the rest of Canada.”
Meropoulis has named longtime Ooks manager Kevin Jones as chair of the championships. Now principal at Leo Nickerson School in St. Albert, Jones has been a coach in the St. Albert Soccer Association since 1984 while also serving as technical and tournament director of the SASA.
One of the reasons NAIT was selected to host the event was the top notch venue it included in its bid. The championships will be played at the new West District Park fields in Spruce Grove.
Spruce Grove Mayor Stuart Houston says the city is looking forward to hosting athletes from across the country. “This will be an excellent opportunity for Spruce Grove to build on its reputation as a venue of choice for sporting events on a national scale,” he says. “The athletes, coaches and organizers of this event can count on the hospitality of our residents and businesses to make their experience in Spruce Grove memorable.”
The combined men’s and women’s CCAA soccer championships is the largest event hosted in Canadian college sports, featuring 12 teams, representing the genders from each of the five CCAA conferences and including the men’s and women’s teams from NAIT, who receive automatic berth as hosts. Meropoulis says the plan is to be ready to compete for the national title. “Both teams have significantly upgraded their talent, in part to an increase in the number of full tuition scholarships being offered.”
NAIT was instrumental in developing intercollegiate soccer in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference and the men’s team won a CCAA championship in 1987 and were Bronze medalists in 2001 and 2005. Most recently the men’s team have finished second in the ACAC for the past four years. The women’s team won an ACAC Championship in 2006 and have consistently been in the top five teams in the conference.
For more information, please contact:
Gregg Meropoulis
NAIT Athletics Coordinator
P 780.471.7601 C 780.718.7177 E geggm@nait.ca
Jennifer Hetherington
Manager of Corporate Communications, City of Spruce Grove
P 780.962.7612 E jhetherington@sprucegrove.org