Iqaqrialu supervised the gym in Clyde River, but he had not coached soccer in about five years when Norman Natanine, 14, the team captain, approached him two months ago. The boys had no one to guide them, and the Nunavut territorial tournament was approaching. A chance to play in the Arctic Winter Games was on the line.

Iqaqrialu could not say no.

“I looked at his face,” he said of his captain. “It was a serious face.”

Making Do

Assis, the chief referee, stood at the front desk of the Frobisher Inn, using a pair of scissors to make yellow cards and red cards from construction paper.

“Think FIFA does this for the World Cup?” he said, smiling.

There are about 600 registered soccer players in Nunavut, more than there are for hockey, and perhaps 1,000 total participants, officials said. Soccer required less expensive gear and fewer players than hockey. It helped provide a year-round activity, a sense of community, a connection to the outside world and a distraction from social problems like alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual abuse and the alarming suicide rate.

“Soccer is more than a sport,” said Kim Walton, a teacher who will coach Nunavut’s under-16 girls’ team at the 2016 Arctic Winter Games. “It can be a lifesaver for some of these kids.”

Sports, like everything in the Arctic, demand constant, patient improvisation. Nunavut makes up about 20 percent of Canada’s land mass and is more than twice the size of Texas, but it has only an estimated 36,000 inhabitants, predominantly Inuit. There are no roads connecting the 25 communities in this vast territory. Every trip requires a snowmobile, a dogsled, an all-terrain vehicle, a boat or an airplane.

Adjustments must be made for immense distance, mercurial weather, extravagant costs and geographic paradox. Soccer is best played on plush grass, but nearly all of Nunavut is tundra.

So the sport has adapted. Soccer is played mostly inside on basketball courts. Iqaluit (pronounced i-HAL-oo-it or i-KAL-oo-it) is one of only three villages in the territory with artificial turf. The selection tournament for the Arctic Winter Games would be played on a synthetic surface fitted to the floor of a hockey rink.