Potential Saskatchewan CPL franchise would be huge for Huskies and sport of soccer

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“If you look at the CPL over its first few years, some of the top U Sports athletes have made significant impacts with their CPL franchises and that’s an exciting piece because it shows that we’re producing a product at the U Sport level that can start being part of the CPL growth.”

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As a coach, a CPL team would mean he can provide his players with an opportunity to further develop his student-athletes.

“Any time there becomes a realistic platform that we can promote them into, that becomes even more exciting now within the program.”

Something else that Chapman envies is the relationships that some of these teams have with the top universities and institutions in their respective cities and how the stronger relationships have already resulted in creating the better teams.

“The CPL’s franchises that are starting to gain some consistency and winning are programs that have significant relationships inside their communities. The importance of the CPL and the relationships with any university in the country becomes very important and it’s got to be a working relationship because that’s gonna be a player pool that a franchise can pull from,” he said.

Ultimately, the biggest takeaway would be the excitement a CPL team could build for the sport of soccer in Saskatchewan.

“It grows the game. It brings more attention to our sport and it grows the significance of what a lot of clubs and academies are doing in our province and it just adds a top piece to the pyramid,” says Chapman. “Right now university soccer is the only top piece in our province. Anytime you can have a top piece like a Blades, Hilltops, Huskies Football, Riders or Rush, their success has a direct impact on the game as a whole right across the province, so that’s really the bigger picture that the CPL can provide.”

For the time being, however, all that Chapman wants to focus on is what he and the program can currently control.

“As a university program, we’re just going to continue to do our job and recruit top players right across the province and right across the world. We’ll also continue to develop our program and build on our winning culture in developing young people.”

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