Even growing up in England, where soccer is more popular than in the States, Robin Dean didn’t have the opportunity to play soccer with an association like his two boys do now with the West Windsor-Plainsboro Soccer Association — where they can join leagues and work with professional trainers.##M:[more]##
He simply played for school teams, and the “pick-up” games he played on weekends were casual and organized by neighborhood kids. But “I’ve played soccer since I could walk,” said Dean, who was recently hired as the new executive director of the West Windsor-Plainsboro Soccer Association, the association’s first full-time employee. “I’m the type of person who spends a good deal of free time watching European soccer games on satellite,” he said.
It’s his passion for the sport, his fondness for working with youth in the community, and his dedication to the association that has landed him the top role. He hopes these things, as well has his prior experience, will help advance the association, which has grown to have about 2,”350 players since its founding in 1979.
Two areas of his focus include raising the quality of the soccer programs themselves and improving the facilities the association uses in order to deliver them. Dean has already begun tackling the latter, as he approached the Township Council in September regarding the memorandum of agreement the two parties have been working on for more than a year.
Dean grew up in England, where his mother was a justice of the peace — equivalent to a lower court judge here — and his father was an electronic engineer. Dean worked for 20 years in the travel industry, operating tours around the world and ended up moving to West Windsor in 1995. His wife is a history teacher at High School North.
He began volunteering with the West Windsor-Plainsboro Soccer Association when the eldest of his two sons — one is a fourth-grader at Village School and the other is an eighth grader at Grover Middle School — joined as a kindergartner in 1999.
Having volunteered with the association for almost a decade, he has also previously served on the association’s board of directors as the director of soccer development, and has been instrumental in initiating several of the association’s programs. One program he initiated was the spring recreation program designed for children who love soccer, who aren’t interested in participating in other spring sports, and who want a more informal playing environment, sort of like the “pick-up” games he played as a child.
“The original idea was to recreate a typical scene around the world where kids just come to the field and organize a game for themselves and play without restrictions and rules, without too much organization, and just enjoy the game for the sake of the game,” he said. The program, however, was limited by its own success, as now, more than 500 kids have joined the spring program, leaving the association no choice but to give it some level of organization. But even that is limited, he said. “It’s fairly true to its original goal — just providing a safe environment for kids to come and play pick-up,” he said.
He was also active in introducing the adult recreational program, which now has approximately 120 adults playing pick-up games on Saturday afternoons. For the association — which has about 1,”600 youth recreation players, 550 youth on 41 travel teams, 200 adult competitive and recreational players, and a variety of programs to offer — “in order to support all of those activities, we need a lot of fields and we need to keep them at a reasonable or good, safe playing level,” Dean said.
That’s why the association wants to spend some money to improve soccer fields in West Windsor. But before it does, it’s looking for some commitment from the township.
For more than a year now, both parties have been working on a memorandum of agreement that will determine what kind of guarantees — including monetary — the township can give the association regarding continued use of township fields, before the association invests large sums of money in them.
The most recent wording in the agreement proposed by the association (and what Dean appeared before the council to discuss) suggests that if the township, for whatever reason, needs to take away the use of the fields in the future, the association be compensated for the money it spent on them. The council is currently reviewing that proposal. The memorandum also sets responsibilities for both parties when it comes to their respective field maintenance responsibilities, but those details already been worked out, he said.
The association wants to “invest a lot of money in creating high-level, safe, well-lit soccer facilities,” he said, but at the same time, it wants to make sure the fields on which it is spending big dollars are kept in fairly good condition and away from casual uses. For example, “we want to ensure that here’s not a big rock festival held there,” he said.
There are three particular locations that have come up in discussions. One is the Zaitz Park on Southfield Road — which is already used exclusively for soccer — where the association would like to install lights. The second is Conover Park on North Post Road, where lights already exist, but the association would like to improve the field surface and possibly install an irrigation system.
And the last is Duck Pond Park on Meadow Road, a recreational site that has not yet been developed, where the association wants to create soccer fields. While estimates of how much it would cost for the association to do so are still undetermined, Dean said he has heard it could cost around $2 million — money the association does not yet have and would have to raise.
The original draft agreement guaranteed 30 years of use to the association for the Duck Pond Park, if it were to invest in it. With the other parks, there were shorter terms, but opportunities for renewal, Dean said.
The association — which has an annual budget of roughly $400,”000, raised largely through registration fees, with some money coming from sponsors, the annual Sunburst Torunament, and sales of WWPSA merchandise — is looking for “a long-term commitment on the part of the township before we enter seriously into a fundraising effort,” he said, adding that both raising the money and building the facility at Duck Pond Park could each take several years.
While Dean said both parties agree that there is a strong likelihood that the fields would always be used for athletic purposes, the association wants to ensure that if the township has to take the fields away in the future and use them for something else, it doesn’t lose out on the money it spent.
He said the association has had a good relationship with the township and that officials have been responsive to discussing the matter with them. He said he hopes the agreement could be worked out soon.
West Windsor Business Administrator Chris Marion said the township attorney is reviewing those changes to the agreement.
“Both parties are making sure there are protections involved for either party if something happens,” Marion said. “They’re (the association) looking to invest monies from their organization into the project, and we want to make sure that everybody is protected to the extent that they need to be protected.”
Improving the facilities is one area that Dean is making a priority. “One of the primary reasons to have a full-time position for the soccer association is to advance the plans for developing our field and facilities,” he said. “This is essential to the role that I have other than running the day-to-day operations of the association.”
