The City of Orillia, Ontario had the grand opening of their new West Orillia Sports Complex this weekend. It's a new twin pad arena with all the bells and whistles you would expect. It's really quite nice, except for that gawd awful netting around the ice surface. But I guess that's the norm now a days - unfortunately. But what really caught my eye were the outdoor playing fields. Four are being built and this is the one that is operational right now. Have a look.
[url]- YouTube
That's field turf. There is a dressing room complex being built next to it and it's fully lighted. It's not completed yet so I don't know what else may be in store. It's really great to see a mid sized city like Orillia (POP: 30K) to have the wherewithal to build something like this. I live in Barrie, just down the highway, a city four times the size and this puts anything we have right in the crapper. Now if the city had just gotten rid of that Nestle's NFL Barfalo Bill promo in the front lobby, it would have been perfect (god I am getting sick of seeing Canadian Football being out promoted in it's own country by this invasive species, but that is another debate for another thread). Congratulations to Orillia for doing this and I'll try and get up for a high school game or two this season. I hope other cities will take notice of this.