A great plan for athletes

The West Island might be finally getting in on the act of allowing outdoor athletes to work on their sports year-round. A tripartite proposal put forward by the Lester B. Pearson School Board, Beaconsfield and the Lakeshore Soccer Association for a soccer dome on the grounds south of Beaconsfield High School means no longer will soccer players — and their parents — have to brave the traffic at 32nd Avenue in order to get to the Catalogna Soccerplexe in Lachine for winter soccer.

And who could bring the sudden bounty of good fortune? The provincial cigarette tax, which after paying down the Big Owe for 30 years, is finally starting to work for Quebec kids.

The West Island is long overdue; its hordes of soccer players make the area a fertile recruiting ground for the indoor soccerplexes.

But the big consideration — the cost of West Island land — made the costs unpalatable for private investors. Another indoor soccerplex, this one in St. Lazare, opened last winter.

Thus, West Island parents faced 25-minute drives either east or west before their kids could suit up and play.

For parents, it’s a far cry from a quick walk to the park to watch the kid play. For kids, it’s the security of knowing you’re in a familiar environment. In short, it’s a winner all the way around.

Too often, school boards, cities and high-school students are in the news for negative issues: drugs, violence, truancy and crime are words often attached to those things in the news.

Well, in this case, you’ve got an arrangement that will hopefully cut down on the number of kids using drugs or committing petty crimes because they have nowhere to go after school or any reason to stay on the straight and narrow. You give kids who might be prone to violence down the road an avenue to channel aggression and energy and you give kids — especially for those teenagers for whom sports is everything; there are a few — one more reason to come to school every day.

It’s nice to see how the system, so often a source of frustration for, well, everybody, can work on occasion, and even better when it can work for kids.