The soccer pitches at King’s Park will be buzzing this weekend as the Penticton Pinnacles first matches of the year take place.
The Pinnacles are hosting a pre-season tournament over the long weekend, with teams from Kelowna, Kamloops, Vernon, Shuswap, Prince George, the Lower Mainland, Edmonton and Calgary. The tournament is for all the Pinnacles teams in all of their age groups (U13 through U18) as well as their two development age groups of U11 and U12. In total, 27 teams will be participating over the weekend.
“It helps with their overall preparation,” said Pinnacles coach and scout Reid Jenkins. “The results are not important, it’s the transition of moving from indoors to outdoors, preparing ourselves and seeing all the different aspects of each squad. It’s a way of identifying and managing what each squad needs to work on throughout the season.”
The Pinnacles have been practising indoors since late October, and the pre-season tournament is a great way to not only help them with the transition to outdoor play, but prepares them for the upcoming season as they will square off against many different teams at the same level as them.
“It really allows us to make the transition from indoors where we are focusing on individual skills, to working on team tactics, and improving soccer IQ for the players and enforcing how we want to play,” Jenkins said.
With the strategies and systems the Pinnacles use throughout all of its teams, developing soccer intuition and knowledge is key for the players.
“Our style of football that we play, we have great success as the squads get older because of our technical style,” said Jenkins. “When you’re younger you make mistakes and those get magnified when you’re very, very young, but as we get older we start to dominate the competition as our players put it together.”
All of the matches will be held at King’s Park, and they begin Friday afternoon and run through Sunday afternoon. A full schedule for the tournament can be found through the Pinnacles website, pinnaclesfc.com. League play will begin on April 3.
