An Island soccer Storm is heading toward provincial championships with four Ladysmith players and a local coach in the wind.
Two Nanaimo-based team – the Upper Island Storm U18 – is competing at B.C. Soccer championships starting Thursday (July 6) in Surrey.
Ladysmith is being represented on the team by Georgia Nicholls, Haven Bouma, Olivia Mazurenko and Shae Battie as well as coach Kathleen Nicholls.
The U18 girls are already Island Cup and Coastal Cup champions so they’ve had plenty of experience already in 2016-17 playing in and winning big matches.
Coach Nicholls said the title is there for the taking if the team can play at the same high level of soccer they have in the past.
“The expectation based on our results is that we’ll do quite well because we won the Coastal Cup,” Nicholls said. “It’s nice going in as top seed and being able to live up that expetitation would be even better.”
The Storm have played just one of the three squads they’ll face at provincials. The opponents have good records and will be good teams, Lee said, but he thinks all are beatable if the Storm play the way they want.
“I’m a firm believer that if we play our soccer, our game and allow the other teams to chase us, that we’re more successful,” said the team’s other coach John Lee.
Cara Dunlop, one of the team captains, said the Storm know the level of competition will be high.
“But we’re focused on ourselves more than the other teams. I think we’re strong enough as a team already that it doesn’t matter who we’re going to face…” she said. “Coming off two big wins, the league and the Coastal Cup, I think the ball’s rolling and we’re just going to sail right into provincials.”
This week’s tournament will present a tougher schedule than most of soccer season, with three or four games in three or four days. The challenge, Dunlop said, is “just knowing when to go and when to not … It’s going to be incredibly hot out there, so it’s just knowing when it’s time to give that extra push and when it’s time to lean back.”
Win or lose, about a third of the U18 Storm players will conclude their minor soccer careers this weekend and Georgia Nicholls, a Storm captain who is aging up, said provincials is “a nice send-off.” But playing for the U18 A Cup, minor soccer’s greatest prize, is motivation for every player on the team.
“This has definitely been a goal [but] we were taking everything step by step and then when we realized we can make it, we definitely pushed very hard to get here,” Nicholls said.
GAME ON … The first match for the U18 Storm is Thursday against the Kamloops Blaze. For more information, click here.