07-07-2025
‘Shoes and a ball': Long-running soccer festival trying to bring the sport back to basics for accessibility
Rain did not dampen the spirits of young players at the Top of the City Soccer Festival in Edmonton on Sunday.
Thousands of people attended the eighth annual Top of the City Soccer Festival at Blue Quill Park on the weekend, organizers say.
The event aims to promote and improve access to soccer through programming and sponsorship.
'Soccer has gotten really, really expensive over the last few years. Some club programs you might be paying upwards of $2,000 just to have your kid play for six months. What we want to see is kids to understand you need shoes and a ball. That's all you need,' said Top of the City Sports Equity Initiative president Mike Dalke on Sunday.
Alongside a soccer tournament, the festival offered a petting zoo, kids' activities and local food trucks.
Proceeds from the tickets to a kids' zone will be used to help alleviate financial barriers to soccer for families in Edmonton, Dalke said.
Over eight years of the festival, he added, parents have been impacted as much as the kids.
'Our soccer communities are somewhat fractured…. They look at this as a business model more than they look at it as something to offer for our kids. We want to show parents the positive way to do sports. And I think what that does is it instills them with the idea of finding clubs that put soccer first, rather than the dollar books.'
With files from CTV News Edmonton's Miriam Valdes-Carletti
