Years of hard work provided a golden return for a soccer family on and off the pitch.
Okotoks brought home the gold medal from the Alberta Soccer Girls U17 Tier 2 Championships on March 13 in Edmonton with structure, steely defence and a flair for the dramatic paving the way.
“We’ve had a great year,” said Okotoks United head coach Matt Lumsden. “They’ve been training and committed for the last two years and this is kind of the fruit of their labour, so to speak.
“The testament and the biggest success of this team is that in the last three years, 16 of the 17 players that were there are still playing on that team and they’ve progressed from Tier 3 to now winning Tier 2 as a first year team.
“They’ve come a long way in a couple of years and it’s a testament to the spirit and commitment that the group of girls have.”
Okotoks finished 3-0-1 in the competition, only allowing two goals against in four matches.
“It means everything to us,” said Okotoks co-captain Ashlyn Grant. “We started out as two groups of girls that barely even knew each other and now we're as Matt says, ‘One big family.’
“We support each other through every single thing we go through on and off the field and have really built this unbreakable relationship that I don’t think many other teams have. We truly are a family and it’s one-of-a-kind. It’s the only team I’ve played on that’s had this high of a bond.”
Defence and goaltending provided the platform for the performance with Okotoks not allowing a goal from open-play during its four games, yielding its two goals on a corner and penalty kick.
“Our two centre-backs and goalkeeper (Cassandra Pasveer) were fantastic the entire weekend and, in fact, were fantastic the entire season,” Lumsden said. “We had the lowest goals conceded record in the division by a long way.
“It’s actually a testament to the whole team and how organized they are both in possession and out of possession as well.”
The provincial tournament was a bit of a change-up for the Calgary area teams as Edmonton plays a nine-aside version of the game with the likes of Okotoks playing seven-versus-seven during its league play.
“Adding two extra players to the field, it’s a little bit slower and a bit more representative of the outdoor game,” Lumsden said. “We have quite a unique style of play with rotational wing-backs, it’s something that teams that play us don’t come up against that often.
“So we were able to basically just add a player or two on the field with minimal fuss and still keep the rotational patterns that we see in our normal play.”
The team had to quickly learn a new format, but adapted as well as could possibly be expected.
“We walked out on the field knowing our two different formations that we did set up in and we just played our normal selves after the first bit of the first game,” Grant said. “Once we got our nerves out, we settled down and just played how Matt has trained us to play.
“We felt really ready, there was almost two years of prep for this moment.”
Okotoks took the tournament icebreaker 1-0 over Airdrie FC with Julia Len finding the back of the net and Pasveer earning the clean sheet at the other end of the pitch.
“It was more about playing how we have trained,” Grant added. “That first provincial game is almost like the make or break of the tournament, it decides where we went for the rest of the weekend.”
A 1-1 draw with Edmonton Scottish enabled Okotoks to qualify for the playoff round, leading to a nailbiting semifinal contest.
“That was a very intense, heated game,” Lumsden said. “There was quality on both teams and we managed to hang onto a draw at the very end.”
United eked out a 7-6 result in penalty kicks to edge Calgary Blizzard 1-0 in the semifinal with Jenna Vervoort notching the winning goal and all seven Okotoks players converting on their attempts.
“That was a very tough moment, but we fought hard in the game,” Grant said. “And when penalty kick time came we chose our spots in the net and we just had confidence in ourselves that we would make it and put the ball in the back of the net and all seven of our players did.
“We were cheering each other on, boosting each other’s confidence knowing that we could make it through.”
The dramatics weren’t quite over for the team with one match left to finish the golden pursuit.
In the gold-medal game, Sophie Tyson scored the game winner, on a give-and-go play with Len, to break the 1-1 deadlock with Medicine Hat’s RASC after Gracyn Sekura earlier found the back of the net for United.
“It was a nice experience and it meant quite a lot to me,” said Tyson.
“This means a lot, we’ve spent so much time working towards it and we finally got the medals and the result to prove it.”
Okotoks United roster: Madison Fitzpatrick, Sophie McIntyre, Sophie Tyson, Emily Moore, Gracyn Sekura, Cassandra Pasveer, Joanne Joy Dumapit, Ava Fellinger, Kailey Craig, Abigail Shaw, Jenna Vervoort, Ashlyn Grant, Emma Servais and Maria Regner.
