Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

KYSA TOURNAMENT

Remembering Mike Bartram: Youth Soccer pays respects to founding father of football in Kamloops

May 6, 2019 | 6:30 PM

KAMLOOPS — His was a name synonymous with soccer in Kamloops. Player, coach, official, administrator, volunteer — Mike Bartram was everything, and when something needed to be done, he did it. Mike left a massive legacy in the soccer community after he lost his battle with cancer in November of 2000. It’s a legacy that lives on every season in Kamloops Youth Soccer.

It was a busy weekend for KYSA on the soccer pitches of Mac Island, as they held their annual Spring League wrap-up, with teams from U13 all the way up to U18 battling it out for soccer supremacy in a tournament named in honour of Kamloops soccer royalty, Mike Bartram.

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“I wasn’t fortunate enough to know Mike Bartram,” KYSA’s Executive Director Missy Cederholm tells CFJC Today. “The fact that his family still participates in the event… that really showcases what he meant to the soccer community and what the soccer community meant to him.”

Bartram was instrumental in growing the game of soccer in Kamloops to the place it’s in now. In 1999, Mike led the UCC Sun Demons to their first Canadian Collegiate National Championship, picking up the CCAA Coaching Excellence Award along the way. Less than a year later, he passed away after losing his battle with cancer, leaving a giant void in the soccer community in the city.

“[Soccer] was his life, it really was. He just loved everything about it,” Mike’s daughter Karen Beumann says. “That’s how he ended in so many different roles – a coach, a ref, an administrator – it was all he wanted to do. People could tell he loved it and he intercepted well with people on all those different levels. That’s how he had such a big influence.”

This year was a special one for KYSA, as members of Mike’s family were in attendance at the tournament. His wife Charmaine, as well as his daughter Karen and her sons, were there to hand out some hardware to the top two teams in the U-13 division.

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“My kids are old enough that they’re playing now,” Beumann says. “It’s really special to come out here and reunite with [so many familiar faces] and see people loving the game of soccer.”

And with close to 3,000 kids now registered in soccer with KYSA, Karen believes her Dad would be proud he was part of building an association that has introduced so many kids to the game he loved.

“To hear his name and have people say ‘oh yeah, Mike Bartram, he was so caring and helpful.’ He just wanted people to be out there and doing their best,” Beumann says. “I think when they hear the name, they remember that, and people who knew him pass that on the people who didn’t. It’s all in the spirit of the game, and fair play and having fun.”