Four terrace teams were points away from gold, all taking second in their divisions at the Kamloops Slurpee Cup over the May long weekend.
One of those teams is the Terrace U15 Girls Select team. It also scored the most points out of every team in its tier at the round robin tournament.
“Terrace was one goal away from winning,” said coach Sean Bujtas. “As much as the team did not get the over all victory, it was a huge victory for the team.”
The team has struggled with scoring the past two seasons so a tournament finish of scoring more goals than any other team there and more goals than any tournament it has ever entered was significant, he said.
“I’m very proud of how the girls adapted to the physical play of the Vancouver Island Ripetide, almost beating them at their own game,” he said, of the team which took the first-place finish with a 3-0-1 record, that being a 1-1 draw against the Terrace squad.
Terrace finished with a 2-0-2 record – wins of 4-2 against Vernon United and 2-0 against Kamloops Blaze in addition to a 2-2 draw with Quesnel and the Riptide 1-1 draw.
The Vernon match was the first of the tournament and the first goal of that game was a set up with a corner kick, beautiful cross in from the corner by Carly Davies, tapped back into the middle by Brittney Peden, and mid-air volley into the back of the net by Lindsay Ewald. That game and the second one, the Quesnel draw, featured a strong defence and strong goalkeeping from Alex Bujtas but it did take the team took a while to get going against Quesnel.
Two goals by Jenna Hoornenborg, assisted by Davies, Ashlee Wojnarwoski, and Alexx Muller with one answered on the Quesnel side, had Terrace up 2-1. But then at the 63-minute mark, three minutes into injury time, there was a mad scramble in front of the Terrace net with Quesnel coming out on top, tying the game at two.
Terrace was up against a very aggressive, physical team in the Ripetide match – “Probably the most physical team Terrace has met ever,” said Bujtas.
But the team quickly adapted, he said, fighting back hard to make sure it was not pushed off the ball. At the 10:50 mark the tandem of Muller and Hoornenborg struck, with Muller picking up the ball in the 18 yard box and sending it over to the left side where Hoornenborg drove it into the net.
Physical play continued with both teams continually fighting hard for the ball, when at 31:13 into the first half (1:13 into injury time) a scramble in the Terrace 18 yard box resulted in a Riptide goal.
The second half was no different than the first with hard checking and a few fouls being called on both sides.
Strong physical defending from Brittany Peden, Anke deWit, Ashlee Wojnarwoski, Hailey Mitchell and Mikaela Jeffery shut down the Riptide forwards for the rest of the game.
Terrace came close many times in the second half not letting up on the Riptide sending shots in from outside and inside the 18 yard box but could not convert. A very hard fought game where Terrace had to accept a tie at the end.
That tie, the team’s second, would be the difference between first and second for the team, despite a solid 2-0 win over the Kamloops Blaze in the final game on May 20, said Bujtas.
Six boys’ teams and two girls’ teams made the trip to compete as part of the 153-team annual tournament, with the U14 Boys, U16 Boys, U17 Boys, and U15 Girls all taking second in their divisions, according to the Kamloops Youth Soccer Association website.
Terrace’s U15 Boys came in third, U13 Boys in sixth, U18 Boys in eighth, with the U13 Girls in fourth.