The Peter Skene Ogden Eagles sent a pair of soccer teams to the inaugural Hope Secondary Indoor Soccer Tournament the weekend of March 10. The senior girls made a run all the way to the tournament final before dropping a 2-0 score to Lake City Secondary (LCSS) of Williams Lake.
"It was a fantastic way to open the season for the girls. It was our first tournament final and all the girls on both teams played fantastic and seemed to get better as the tournament progressed," said PSO coach Sean Glanville.
The tournament featured five teams in both the junior and senior divisions including PSO, Lake City, Merritt, Seabird Island (Agassiz area) and the host Hope side. The PSO Sr. team dropped their opening game to LCSS 'A' 3-1 Friday, March 10 in the afternoon but bounced back with convincing victories of 5-1 and 3-0 over Hope Secondary and LCSS 'B' to finish the day on a positive note. Charlie McQueen and Kailey Lund led the offence with three goals each Friday. Goalkeeper Chantelle Walters made some phenomenal saves in both victories.
In their final round-robin game, Saturday, March 11, the seniors only needed a draw against Merritt to advance to the finals and, thanks to a goal by Sereena Alex, earned the hard-fought 1-1 tie result they needed. In Saturdays final, PSO was missing top offensive threats McQueen and Lund who had to leave early for work commitments but the girls still battled hard eventually dropping a 2-0 decision to LCSS 'A'.
The Sr. Girls were composed of Grade 10-12 players and one of PSO's lines featured all Grade 10's including Ali Walker, Marina Guimond, Maddy Martin, Valeria Pineda, which more than held their own all weekend. Returning players Sereena Alex, Allison Carr and Jaime Harper had strong showings and new players Nicole Varney and Shay Tanner did well in their first ever action with the team.
"It's nice to see some of the younger players step up and do so well and to know the team will be in good shape for the years to come," said Glanville.
The PSO juniors were coached by Sarah Tostenson and had a fantastic showing, finishing in third place. They defeated Seabird Island twice over the weekend by a convincing margin, but dropped their contest to Merritt and lost a nail-biter in a penalty shootout to Hope.
"The junior division goes up to Grade 10 and our team was made up of mostly Grade 8 girls and a couple Grade 9's so they performed quite admirable considering the age gap," said Glanville. "Our senior girls were able to make it to the junior's late game Friday versus Hope to cheer them on and we were all very impressed with how well they performed."
Brooke Montgomery had a great weekend in goal for the juniors and Abby Foote and Ivy Sahara led the team in scoring. Other members of the squad included: Ella Burt-Whistle, Darlyssa Chretien, Lauren Popadinak, Lauren Keller, Rene Van Osch, and Stephanie Hilstad.