Hey NDGSA – wake up! We want to help!

Look, I get it. It’s a small association of volunteers – people who work their tails off to make sure that hundreds of young soccer players have a great summer.

I have nothing but the utmost respect for the people who run all of this community’s sports associations – especially those who run the NDGSA, which is one of the biggest of them all. It’s no easy task. But here’s what gets me riled up.

It’s been almost nine years since I wrote my first story in The Monitor and over the last almost decade, I’ve had great relationships with the NDG hockey, figure skating, and baseball leagues.

I’ve had nothing but a pleasure dealing with the Hampstead recreation department and all its teams.

Montreal West is the smallest of all the small cities we cover but the people involved with hockey, baseball, soccer and whatever else you can think of have gone out of their way to let us know what’s going on so we can cover their kids’ sports.

But the NDGSA? Nothing.Ever.

Let me put it straight to all of you: We want to cover soccer! We want to cover the NDGSA! We want to write about your kids!

But we get absolutely no help from anyone involved in the sport on any level.

I hate to call out an association of volunteers in the paper, but this is it. This is the end of the line.

My ego isn’t big enough to think The Monitor is the be-all, end-all for coverage of your kids.

There are other papers. There are websites.

But I’m telling you all right now that this newspaper – a newspaper that reaches tens of thousands of you each week – wants to cover your kids playing soccer.

So this is a call for someone, anyone involved in NDG soccer to email me at noahsidel@gmail.com with schedules, results, phone numbers, tournament information, anecdotes, anything. Anything at all.

Otherwise we’re done covering soccer in NDG for the rest of the summer.

It’s been eight years of this and we’ve had enough.

On one hand, we never get any help from the NDGSA. On the other, soccer parents have voiced to us many, many times that they feel our coverage is biased towards baseball in the summer.

After all, the NDGSA is something like three times the size of NDG Baseball.

Well, folks, NDG Baseball picks up the phone. NDG Baseball sends us press releases. NDG Baseball lets us know when it hosts a major event like a tournament or a championship playoff.

Let’s see if we can’t get a little help from someone, anyone at the NDGSA.

If you give us a hand, I promise we will cover soccer in this community like it’s never been covered before.

That’s noahsidel@gmail.com... You can fill my inbox all day long if you’d like. Nothing would make me happier!