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WEDNESDAY
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A closer look at school district’s $29m new home
THURSDAY
Surrey school board chair Laurae McNally (left) is all smiles as building project manager Dick Koch offers a closer look at the district’s new administration centre, located on the grounds of the old Douglas College on 140th Street. The contractor will hand over the keys to school officials on Dec. 3 and staff will move into the facility in phases, starting in February. Story on page 9. ❚PHOTO/Ted Colley
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2010
Disney on Ice is in town, and we’ll have a review of the show. Click on ENTERTAINMENT
Football’s Rams run for Langley Long-established junior team to leave Surrey next season Apparently, the grass is Michael BOOTH greener on the other side of Staff Reporter 196th Street. The South Surrey Big Kahuna Rams — the lone Lower Mainland entry in the B.C. Junior Football Conference — are pulling up stakes and heading east to Langley. The move will leave Surrey without a junior football team for the first time in more than 60 years. “The bottom line is it came down to facilities,” said Rams media director Chris Swartz. “That’s no secret. We gave it five years at South Surrey Athletic Park to make it work. Our hopes right from the start was that the facilities would be improved over a period of time and that just never happened. We don’t want to point fingers at the community or the
city, that’s just the way things are here.” The Rams have been around in various forms since 1948, playing at the junior tier 1, junior tier 2 or juvenile levels. In 1988 the club joined the BCFC as an expansion team and, after missing the playoffs the first year, have qualified for the postseason every year since. Since 1988, the Rams have won five BCFC championships, most recently in 2005. In 1992, the Rams made their only national championship game appearance, losing to Ottawa. The team played out of Bear Creek Park until 2006 when they shifted their operation to South Surrey Athletic Park. The field in South Surrey met the team’s needs, but the facility was bare bones at best with no proper clubhouse for players or seating area for spectators.
“It wasn’t a hard decision at all from the club’s standpoint,” Swartz said. “When you look at the facilities we’re going to, there’s no comparison. We’re going to be based out of McLeod Stadium and we’ll have our own dedicated clubhouse and dressing room in the stadium. We’ll have a nice practise facility there and the ability to play out of a proper stadium with grandstands is exciting. “South Surrey has been a great place to play and there are good people here. We really thought the demographics here would have supported the club easily if we had the facilities. You can’t expect people to pay 10 bucks to come and sit on the side of a grass hill. They might come once but getting them to come back again is tough.” mbooth@thenownewspaper.com
“It came down to facilities.… You can’t expect people to pay 10 bucks to come and sit on the side of a grass hill (at South Surrey Athletic Park).” — Chris Swartz, media director of South Surrey Big Kahuna Rams