A Yellowknife man is one of five people across Canada being honoured for positively impacting their communities through soccer.
Joe Acorn has been named one of the Canadian Premier League and Volkswagen Canada’s 2024 Game Changer award winners.
Acorn is recognized for his work founding the Yellowknife Bay Soccer Club, known as Sundogs.
“I knew I was getting nominated but when they came up here and said they were going to do a little video, they told me it was a nomination video. I didn’t realize it was the actual winners video,” Acorn said.
“So it kind-of shocked me when they told me I’d actually won the thing.”
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Acorn said he began coaching soccer in the early 1990s when he lived in PEI. After moving to Yellowknife, he began volunteering with another team. When his kids were old enough, he started Sundogs.
“We just wanted to get something going for them and a true club system,” he said. “Previous to this, there hadn’t really been a real club. There’d been a bunch of teams but nobody had really set up a club where kids could go from U9 to U10 etc, and that’s what I really wanted to get set up, establish a structure.”
Acorn said he likes soccer because it’s an inclusive fitness sport that is fun to play.
“Soccer is really a sport where you can be any height, you can be skinny, you can be thicker, tall, short – doesn’t really matter, there’s spot for you on the field,” he said.
This year’s Game Changer award winners received a $5,000 donation to a charity of their choice, a limited-edition custom jersey and tickets to a Canadian Premier League match.
This is the third Game Changer edition. Nominations are now open for the 2025 awards.
