In the stands, it’ll be the city’s largest outdoor classroom.
On the field, the lesson plan just got amplified too.
More than 11,000 kids from grades 5 to 12 will occupy the east grandstand of Tim Hortons Field on Tuesday morning to watch Forge FC play host to CFL Montréal in the first leg of the 2024 Canadian (men’s) Soccer Championship. Game two of the total-goals elimination series will be in Montréal on Wednesday, May 22.
The entire east side of the stadium, top to bottom, has been sold out for a few days, but there are still plenty of tickets left for other students, parents, grandparents, and members of the general public on the west side for the 11 a.m. kickoff. And anyone who buys a ticket there will be treated to a free lunch, courtesy of Forge founder Bob Young.
Forge’s original opponent for the Canadian Premier League’s first-ever School Day Match presented by Stelco, had been Halifax’s HFX Wanderers, but when Hamilton beat York United FC in the TELUS Canadian championship opening round on Wednesday night (Match Review), the Halifax game had to be moved back to August 14, because the TELUS Canadian Championship takeS priority over league games.
So, huge stakes, huge audience. Organized bedlam at an unfathomable volume.
“We love playing in front of big crowds, and knowing there’s already going to be 11,000 there is great for us,” says Forge star David Choinière, whose brother Mathieu plays for FC Montréal. “It’s a different crowd because it’s all kids: they’re going to be loud, they’re going to be happy. It’s going to be exciting.”
There are over 100 schools involved, stretching from Niagara to Oakville, with the heaviest concentration in Hamilton and its catchment area.
This marriage of sport and education has been planned for two years, and its conceptual beginnings were even earlier than that.
“It’s a massive undertaking for us to work through, but we’ve got a pretty good plan,” says Nicole Demers, Forge FC’s Vice President of Business Operations.
“It’s a great opportunity to engage youth with our game. But it’s also a great opportunity to get the whole community together and help promote a sense of pride among our youth. We have a lot of new Canadians too, and this will be a perfect day for everyone to find common ground through soccer.
“In the leadup to 2026 (World Cup), this is a great way to get younger people here engaged.”
Demers went on to say that the School Day Match couldn’t have happened without Stelco, which is offsetting transportation costs for 2000 students at equal opportunity schools. She also credits the community outreach work done by Hamilton Sports Group’s Senior Marketing Director Courtney Stephen and his staff for setting a template with such programs as FirstOntario’s BeFit school day.
Stephen, in turn, cites the groundwork done by the Hamilton Bulldogs in their school day games when the junior hockey team was in town. With the guidance of the Bulldogs’ Peggy Chapman and Justin Ismael, Stephen and his staff spent time studying how the Dogs connected a hockey game with educational opportunities.
“The first thing you learn is that it’s a Rubik’s Cube of logistics,” Stephen laughs. “There’s the communication with teachers and parents, there are tickets to distribute, 220 buses to bring into a neighbourhood, there’s the fact that it’s a cashless stadium, and all other kinds of other details.
Forge put a proposal to both Hamilton school boards for a game last season but realized it was so big they wanted to spend an extra year perfecting the blueprint and getting all partners on the same page. Once they solidified the concept with the Hamilton boards, they opened it up to Halton and then other areas.
“We were thinking that if we could fill up just the lower east side of the stadium with 4-5,000 kids it would be good,” Stephen recalls.
“But as soon as we opened registrations, there was an overwhelming demand. I think that speaks to the extended learning in the classrooms and the opportunity to promote a healthy active lifestyle, which is at the root of Forge FC and what we’re trying to do off the pitch and in the community as well. There are a lot of people working behind the scenes in our organization.
“This can only happen because the Forge has been involved in the area, and in schools specifically since the franchise started and has built up trust and strong relationships with educators.”
In their final season here, the Bulldogs and the schools they worked with linked student-attended games to the curriculum surrounding anti-bullying. For Tuesday morning’s Forge match, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board created a high school curriculum that includes 58 possible learning activities spread across all subject departments, with a specific lesson created for Grade 9 math.
“Any opportunity to partner with Hamilton Sports Group in support of student experience is a ‘winning play’ for Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board,” HWDSB Superintendent of Student Achievement Program Michelle Lemaire said via email.
“The School Day Match experience begins in classrooms where secondary students have made curriculum connections to Forge FC and soccer through learning in English, Math, Science and more.”
The scope of the curriculum courses is vast and includes teaching units in Science, Social Studies, The Arts, Canadian World Studies, Computer Studies, English, English as a Second Language, French as a Second Language, Math, Phys. Ed., Humanities, and Technology.
Among suggested course objectives and projects were such varied tasks as researching Forge FC’s marketing methods, designing team ads, creating ‘trading cards’ of players with publishing software, analyzing the impact of Tim Hortons Field on the Stipley neighbourhood and the local tourism industry, comparing the motion patterns of soccer’s different positions, predicting the distance covered by a specific player, researching pro athletes’ energy balances and developing an energy plan for a Forge player, determining the factors influencing food choices at the stadium, and breaking down the clothing market associated with Forge.
“Obviously, the educators write that curriculum,” Demers said. “In our many discussions with school boards, we talked about what is a high priority for them. We didn’t want to send the kids off to the game just as a one-off. We were conceptualizing how we bring elements of the classroom to a Forge game.
“It makes it fun for the kids too.”
And when the kids have fun, especially eardrum-splitting fun, the home team has fun too.
“It’s the small stuff,” Choinière explains. “You go in for a tackle and you hear the fans cheering for you. A shot on goal, they cheer for you. Every little action you get a cheer from the fans.
“It’s very helpful. As a player, it gives you very positive vibes.”