A season for the record books, that’s how coach Caitlin Sabatino would describe the Lake City Secondary School Falcons senior girls soccer season.
The team, which successfully qualified for the AAA provincials in the first year as an amalgamated school, travelled to Vancouver Technical School, the hosts, to participate in the provincial tournament this past Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
The squad’s first game of the tournament was against a strong team from South Delta, who ended up playing in the championship game on Saturday.
The Falcons fell 4-0 to the Sun Devils, however, Sabatino said the team played a fantastic game.
“We just lacked some offensive pressure,” Sabatino said, adding the player of the game went to goaltender Morgan Moore.
In the Falcons’ second game of the tournament the girls took on the Kelowna Owls.
“Unfortunately, the girls had a hard time getting into the game mentally and took their second loss of the tourney,” Sabatino said.
Player of the game went to Nisha Khakh.
Friday morning brought sunshine and renewed energy as the local squad took on a team from Kitsalano.
Heading into halftime the game was tied 0-0 but, again, LCSS was unable to find the back of the net and fell 2-0, ending the round robin 0-3.
Player of the game in that effort went to Kendall Jensen.
Friday’s second game saw Lake City meet North Burnaby in a tightly contested game.
In an interesting turn of events, midfielder Nicki Trotter was stripped of a scoring opportunity by an overzealous Vancouver Technical fan, who stole the ball from her — running onto the field from the sidelines — before putting it in the back of the net.
This bit of fan shenanigans seemed to break the scoring drought, however, as LCSS finally netted some goals — the first by Montana Reid, who also received player of the game honours. The second came from Kara Zurak off of a nicely placed penalty shot.
Unfortunately, two goals was not enough as the final score was 3-2.
The final game of the tournament saw Lake City face the host, Vancouver Technical school.
“Both sides played incredibly well with the local team having lots of offensive chances, moving the ball well and playing as a very cohesive team,” she said.
The final score ended up being 2-0 in favour of the host school. Final player of the game award went to Nicki Trotter.
“Despite the girls record they were very much in all of the games and received accolades from many of the coaches on their play and sportsmanship,” Sabatino said.
The Falcons were also awarded the Fair Play award for the tournament which reiterated their sportsmanship and conduct throughout the entire tournament.
“The team will be losing eight seniors this year but the future looks very bright for the local squad and many more provincial opportunities are sure to come,” she said. “The team would like to thank all of the parents, teachers, and businesses that have helped make their inaugural season such an outstanding success.”