Surrounded by the members of the Newmarket Soccer Club he helped build, Bernie Salter expressed pride in how far it had come.
The club gathered May 25 to honour the 90-year-old as the club's first lifelong member, and recognize his prior induction into the Newmarket Sports Hall of Fame. Soccer officials and colleagues alike came to recognize Salter’s decades of service to the club and local soccer community.
“Small beginnings, and now look at this. This is impressive,” Salter said of the club. “Thank you very much for being here and honouring me. I feel very proud. It’s just wonderful.”
The longtime soccer coach was first inducted into the local hall of fame in 2018 for his years of service to the club, which began when he settled in Newmarket in 1974. Salter went on to help coach the adult competitive team to a championship, along with helping establish the house league tournament Soccerfest.
Salter said he started with the club because his son was playing. He said it is an important thing to support to help get kids out into the world.
“The game is a useful thing to the young people, whether they’re five years old or 35 years old,” he said.
Club president Petra Fera said they wanted to recognize Salter’s at the club level, given his years of service there. Although his initial hall of fame induction was in November 2018, Fera said the pandemic eventually delayed local recognition plans.
“It feels great to be able to acknowledge and honour somebody who was really the base and foundation of our club,” she said. “He gave so much of this time. He was a fantastic volunteer. He gave a lot into coaching, the development of the coaches, initiating some of the events and tournaments at the club level.”
Officials from Ontario Soccer and the York Region Soccer Association, plus local club members, were on hand to recognize Salter.
Club technical advisor Rick Morandini said he was delighted to see the variety of people who came out.
“We look around the room, and we see the commitment people are making because really, when we ask some of our coaches, 'It would be great to have you meet someone who is a legend of soccer in Newmarket,' this is the type of turnout we get,”
Salter — a retired travel agent who first immigrated to Canada from England in 1957 — has received plenty of recognition over the years. He was named the town’s citizen of the year in 1991 and was inducted into the York Region Soccer Association Hall of Fame in 2014.
Still, he joked that his favourite accolade is usually “the last one.”
He said he was always someone who wanted to be involved, joining several different clubs and associations.
But he said he does not get as far as he did without help.
“I don’t get anywhere like this until I’ve got support,” he said. “I don’t do it all by myself.”
