It wasn’t quite the finish they were looking for but the Kwalikum Kondors senior boys soccer team capped off an impressive season with a seventh-place provincial finish.
After being undefeated in league play, winning the North Island title and finishing second at the Island Championships, the Kwalikum Kondors were looking to make their mark at the provincial championships last week in Burnaby.
After a tournament opening loss to the eventual champions, Okanagan Mission 2-1, the Kondors bounced back to win two of their next three games, finishing second in their pool.
“That was tough for us,” head coach Butch Gayton said. “Heading into that tournament, we had a lot of high expectations for ourselves. These boys had played so great all season and we were really riding a wave of momentum heading into that first game.”
“Okanagan Mission were a good team, they had height on their side as well with quite a few of their players a good four or five inches taller than our tallest player. They took advantage of that and made us pay. We had our chances to score and just couldn’t bury them.”
Another loss in their fourth game of the tournament saw them pitted in the game for seventh place. Tournament seeding had put the Kondors in a position to play as high as fourth place but they ended up losing 2-0 to Alpha (Burnaby) to drop down to play for seventh place.
“We had an outside shot to finish high,” Gayton said. “We just couldn’t make it happen. It’s just one of those things where you’ve been able to score the ball frequently all season and then you’re snake bitten. You hit a couple of posts, have a few shots that narrowly miss, it’s the ugly side to this beautiful game.”
In their final game, the Kondors found that scoring touch, beating David Thompson (Vancouver) 4-1 to finish in seventh.
“That was a big win in all kinds of ways,” Gayton said. “They were pretty down after losing that fourth game, falling to play for seventh or eight place. But the boys were able to pick themselves up and bounced back very well in that final game.”
“The effort they showed was tremendous and I was very happy to see them play that game for themselves and earn a respectable seventh-place finish in the province. It’s never easy once you get to the provincials, anything can happen for anyone.”
“It just wasn’t meant to be for us to finish where we wanted to but we’re proud of that seventh-place finish no matter what happened before for us.”
The team narrowly missed making the provincials last season. Gayton said it was “their determination and desire not to let that happen again” that got them to the big dance.
“They worked hard for it,” Gayton said. “They all told me at the start of the year we were going to provincials and we did, so my hats off to that group of guys for fighting for what they believed in.”
