Yellowknife soccer officials cry foul over regional teams

Indoor soccer organizers in Yellowknife are opposing what they say is a last-minute decision to bend amateur sporting rules for regional teams outside the city.

Soccer teams representing each of the territory's five regions, including Yellowknife, arescheduled to face off in territorial trials in January, with the winner representing the N.W.T. in the Arctic Winter Games in March in Yellowknife.

But since not enough athletes tried out, some teams outside the capital city are borrowing players from neighbouring regions, even though a territorial arbitrator ruled last month that such a move runs afoul of the rulesset bySport North, the territory's sporting authority. The territorial government overturned that decision shortly thereafter.

Jack Simpson, a soccer co-ordinator in Yellowknife,saida team fromone region shouldbe made up ofplayers from that region, not fromanother region even if that means some regions won't have enough players to enter a team.

"It's more important that the process have integrity than the process include them. That sounds really harsh, but that's the reality," Simpson said Saturday at a Sport North meetingin Yellowknife.

"If the process doesn't have integrity, every athlete in every division could be affected."

Yellowknife representatives said they don't take issue with the idea of regions sharing players, but they saidthe government's decision to overturn the ruling was made after Yellowknife's team was already in place.

"We went several times over the last year as Yellowknife to Sport North to ask that the regions combine because we knew that they wouldn't be able to field teams," said Kate Cannell, a soccer representative from Yellowknife.

"What happened was we were told that there was no authority to change that ruling until the next go-around for 2010. And now, at the 13th hour, the decision has been changed because people went [on an] alternate route to get that decision changed. That's the issue."

With the territorial government overturning the arbitrator's ruling, Simpson and other Yellowknife representatives say they wonder why their athletes have to follow the rules of a strict selection process while smaller communities don't have to.

But Yvonne Carpenter, the Inuvik-based president of the N.W.T. Soccer Association, said filling some teams' rosters with players from other regions has allowed more athletes to attend the territorial trials.

"I really want to see them foster that spirit rather than be so competitive and so upset because somebody's on the court that shouldn't be," Carpenter said. "That should be moot."

The Yellowknife soccer organizers say they will take up the issue with the territory's minister of municipal and community affairs.