While most children & young people traditionally play soccer outdoors in the Spring & Summer months, PMSA has run a successful indoor Fall & Winter program that many of our players participate in, for well over ten years. Making use of local gymnasiums for weekly training, Ponoka Storm then usually plays in Indoor leagues run by CASA. Where a viable league option is not available, we exhaust all efforts to ensure our players have the opportunity to play friendly matches &/or participate in tournaments.
Generally, training happens once a week at a local gymnasium. We are still in the process of confirming days and times and locations. League play generally happens on Saturdays; the U9 Developmental/Competitive program plays games at the Wetaskiwin Drill Hall &/or Camrose Community Centre and U11-U17 Competitive leagues run at The Dome in Red Deer and the Camrose Community Centre in Camrose. Additional games may from time to time be scheduled at the Collicutt Centre in Red Deer.
The Indoor Soccer Season runs the second week of October (following Thanksgiving Monday), breaks for two to three weeks over Christmas break and then continues on in the New Year until the first or second week of March.
PMSA generally tries to register players in the following age groups:
U7 - Recreational
U9 - Developmental/Competitive
U11 - Competitive
U13 - Competitive
U15 - Competitive
U17 - Competitive
As a general rule, PMSA runs gender specific programming from U5 thru to U19, in as often as it is possible in terms of registration numbers. This decision to do our best to always offer gender specific soccer has been our official stance since 2014. That decision was made primarily for what we think gives boys and girls the best opportunity to develop as soccer players. Our club's experience is that when girls are given the opportunity to play with other girls, they play with more confidence, they demonstrate creativity with the ball, and are unafraid to take leadership roles on their teams. This approach has worked to our benefit in terms of player retention; within our governing district, no community program has had a stronger girls soccer program & player retention per capita than PMSA. That being stated, we recognize the need for flexibility. We believe that girls and boys can play together. If we did not have the registrations to support gender specific programming, we would move toward whatever would provide kids the best opportunity to play soccer, including a Co-ed/mixed gender set up. However, if given the choice, we will always choose to defer to our preferred model for player development & retention of girls playing with girls and boys playing with boys.
