Newmarket\u00a0Soccer Club honours legend as its first lifelong member<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\nFera started as a soccer mom but found herself more involved. She became manager of her son\u2019s competitive team and for 10 years she was known as the \u201cmomager\u201d who was also involved in sponsorship, events and activities and as a mentor manager.<\/p>\n
Then came a year-long stint as the club\u2019s vice-president, followed by the last three years as president of the non-profit organization. Meanwhile her eight-year-old daughter is playing recreational soccer with the club.<\/p>\n
She juggles the volunteer work with her day job as head secretary at Sacred Heart Catholic High School.<\/p>\n
The Newmarket Soccer Club has more than 5,000 active members, which includes adults and children playing recreationally and competitively.<\/p>\n
It all started in 1960, the culmination of a multi-year effort. The club takes pride in constantly building its community year after year.<\/p>\n
Over the years it adapted and evolved. By 1992, there were 1,357 players, including adults and youths playing on recreational and competitive teams.<\/p>\n
Talks for a dome began in 2006 and, in July 2013, the club celebrated its grand opening.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe club was really booming in 2012-13. We had built our own facility. A lot of hard work and effort went into making that happen,\u201d says Fera. \u201cThat really showed the community that we were here to stay and we were taking it seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n
The facility is used every day of the week, by the club, neighbouring schools and other organizations and sports groups, allowing for fitness training along with competitive and adult programming.<\/p>\n
In the summer, it is used to hold summer camps, which helps pay the bills.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was probably one of the best moves for the Newmarket Soccer Club to build a stand-alone facility,\u201d says Fera.<\/p>\n
While all recreational groups took a hit during the pandemic when the town\u2019s soccer club started rebuilding it grew even bigger than it was before.<\/p>\n
There are now six full-time staff members working behind the scenes. Fera says the goal is to offer the best programming with affordable rates and encouraging feedback to attract more players.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Aug. 17, the club is hosting an anniversary celebration with celebrities, food, activities and, of course, soccer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-49804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}