A change in philosophy is bearing fruit on several branches for Okotoks United.
The Okotoks minor soccer club’s girls program brought home three medals from the Alberta Soccer Indoor Provincial Championships to continue a recent trend of success on the stage.
“Over the last five or six years we’ve transformed our approach on the girls side of things,” said Okotoks United technical director Matt Lumsden. “We focus more on social connections and fun and developing a team spirit with the skill levels that go alongside that and develop as competition starts.”
“In 2017, we had four girls teams and since then we’ve doubled that, this outdoor season we will have eight girls teams. We have some age groups with multiple teams which is an anomaly for a small town like Okotoks let alone all the other bigger clubs in Calgary.”
Creating those strong social bonds and an enjoyable environment with outstanding female role models as coaches and leaders has enabled the club to succeed on the pitch and importantly to boost its participation, bucking a trend in youth female sports.
“We’ve seen the standard of our program rise slowly over time, as well as the depth of players,” he added. “Things are going really well in our girls program and we’re growing at a good rate whereas most clubs are finding it quite hard to sustain their levels of female participation.
“Peter Mundy has been speaking at the Alberta level and people are looking to us as a good example of what we’re doing to keep female players in sport, which is the first priority, and then translate that into success on the field as well.”
Success on the field came on three fronts for Okotoks with a medal of every colour for its efforts.
Okotoks took the provincial gold in U13 Tier 3 with a prolific weekend in Lethbridge with 22 goals over four games.
“They played in the Calgary league city finals the week before and lost a tough one in the semifinals,” said Lumsden. “So it was good to see that group of girls bounce back and go four on the bounce to win the championship."
United downed Medicine Hat 6-2 in the gold medal game with Reese MacPherson scoring a hat trick and Renee Emms adding the brace.
Emms had a hat trick in a victory in pool play with Capri McEwan scoring four- and three-goal performances during the round-robin.
It was silver for the U15 Tier 3 Okotoks squad in a much lower scoring tournament.
Okotoks posted a pair of shutout wins over Edmonton and Calgary Foothills en route to the final with Charlie Burnham scoring in each game of the competition for United.
The CNEU Flames out of Calgary took the final by a 4-1 score.
In Edmonton, Okotoks rallied for a bronze medal in the U19 Tier 2 ranks, with the core of the team coming off consecutive gold medals at the U17 level over the past two seasons.
“They were hoping to three-peat,” Lumsden said. “At U19, some teams go off to play in the adult leagues and some stay in the youth leagues. Two of the strongest teams in the province stayed and played U19, a Red Deer team and an Edmonton Scottish team.”
Okotoks went undefeated in pool play and ran into the eventual gold medallists in the semifinal, dropping a 2-1 result.
In the bronze medal final, Okotoks imposed its will with a 3-0 win over another Edmonton side, its second clean sheet over them on the weekend.
Ashlyn Grant, Maria Regner and Joanne Joy Dumapit scored with Cassandra Pasveer posting the shutout.
“The girls did well to medal at provincials, which is hard enough to do, let alone three years in a row,” Lumsden said.
Okotoks United shifts into outdoor season with registration numbers trending positively with the expectation of four to five more teams than it had in 2023.
“We’re seeing steady growth overall,” Lumsden said. “The game overall is growing and our club is growing and it’s a good problem to have as we look to facilitate as many opportunities for as many players as possible.”
