Notre Dame’s new ‘field of dreams’ makes its debut at end of historic football season

It’s a high school cross-town battle straight out of the movies – East Van versus westside Vancouver – and a rivalry fuelled by the fact the two schools had not faced off in two yeard as the COVID pandemic forced the cancellation of the entire football season last year.

So when the Notre Dame Jugglers and Vancouver College Fighting Irish football teams ran onto Juggler Field to contest the 65th Archbishop’s Trophy Game, it would be a day to remember.

A chilling wind cut the November air, driving ice-cold rain into players and spectators alike, but the rawness of the weather could not diminish the excitement on the field and in the umbrella-filled stands. Not only were the Jugglers and Irish the two top-rated AAA senior-boys high-school teams in the province at the time, but the field on which the two Catholic schools were renewing their longstanding cross-town rivalry was seeing its first major action.

Funded in part by the Archdiocese of Vancouver’s Project Advance, the artificial-turf field and grandstand allows Notre Dame Regional Secondary to stage home games at its Renfrew-Street campus for the first time in its history.

The U.S.-football-sized field is tucked neatly into a cozy corner of the school grounds, with only a small buffer between buildings and gridiron on the eastern and northern sides of the field.

“It’s been a long process,” Jugglers’ assistant coach George Oswald, a 1964 ND grad, told the Varsity Letters sports blog about the construction of the field. “The first idea of a field came back in the 1960s.”

The dream started to become a reality when the school launched a major renovation project in 2004, and then came into sharp focus in 2011 when Oswald confirmed that the newly renovated school’s footprint would allow just enough room for a field and a 730-seat grandstand.

Still, financing and city-regulatory issues dogged the project. “There were several neighbours that were very upset about all of this because the rumours that got out were that it was going to be a 20,000-seat stadium,” Jugglers’ head coach Denis Kelly, a VC grad of 1968, told Varsity Letters. “Everything got blown out of proportion, so they had to get a committee together to meet with them and keep everyone informed.”

When the field was finally completed this fall, all eyes were on the calendar and the renewal of the Archbishop’s Trophy showdown. The two teams arrived for the big match after having followed very different paths. In 2019, The Fighting Irish had one of the most memorable seasons in the school’s history and captured the AAA Provincial Championship in dominant fashion. The Jugglers, on the other had, scraped through the regular season with only two wins, but made it all the way to the semi-finals before being knocked out.

In 2021, Vancouver College continued its dominance from 2019 and maintained its initial No. 1 ranking throughout the season, while Notre Dame rose steadily in the rankings to No. 2.

The winner of the big showdown would not only take home the Archbishop’s Trophy but would also enjoy a bye week in the AAA Coastal playoffs. “This is going to be a special game,” said one shivering spectator.

It turned out to be a bruising battle of gridiron titans. In the end, the Irish eked out a 9-6 victory in a hard-hitting, turnover-filled game played before a wind-whipped, umbrella-holding, standing-room-only crowd.

VC ended its regular season undefeated but lost in the Coastal quarterfinals Nov. 20, eliminating the Irish from further action. ND’s season ended with a loss in the Coastal semi-finals the following Saturday.

Nevertheless, the season left both teams with unforgettable memories of a once-in-a-lifetime Archbishop’s Trophy game contested on Notre Dame’s new field of dreams, Juggler Field.

Strachan Liberman is a Grade 11 student at Notre Dame Regional Secondary.

With B.C. Catholic files.