KAMLOOPS – A pair of Kootenay South players helped the Nelson U18 Selects girls’ team to a gold medal finish at the BC Soccer B Cup Provincial Championship in Kamloops in early July.
Tara and Jamie Horning were added to the Nelson club late in the season after the injury bug hit the team. The girls first played with the Selects in the Slurpee Cup in late May before joining the squad again at the provincial championships between July 5-8.
“The twins played with us at Slurpee Cup,” said Nelson Selects Coach Paul Burkart. “They are very talented, physical players and love to play the possession game like us. When we lost a couple of our defenders to injuries, we knew they would be a perfect fit for our team.”
Most of the players on the Nelson U18 team have played together since they were 11-years-old and had some very good success capturing a provincial gold in 2016 in Penticton and silver last season in Surrey.
“Although we called on them late to join us and they had not played soccer in almost a month, they both train outside of soccer, so (they) were ready to compete right from the first whistle,” said Burkart.
In the opening round-robin game of the provincials, the Nelson team beat the Pinnacles from Penticton 2-1. Penticton scored first before Nelson tied the score midway through the second half. Nelson scored late in the second half to edge out the Penticton side. Nelson then beat Bays United out of Victoria 5-1 in the second game to book their spot in the gold medal match.
The Selects played the undefeated Kamloops Blaze in the championship game. The same Blaze squad won gold in the U17 division in 2017. But Nelson struck early in the first half to put the Kamloops squad on their heels. Nelson scored their second goal early in the second half and put the game out of reach with fifteen minutes left taking a 3-0 lead, which they held to full time.
“All of our girls, including Tara and Jamie, played such great defensive soccer. Once we scored a couple of goals, I felt really confident that they could hold off Kamloops even though they scored nine goals in their round robin games. I’m so pleased that Tara and Jamie had the chance to compete with us at this level of soccer,” said Burkart. We showed that players from even the smaller associations, such as Nelson and Kootenay South, can play with the best in the province.”