Vikes soccer future in good hands
Royal Bay’s Christie leads talented group of UVic recruits
As an indication of the strength of Island high school girls’ soccer, six of the eight incoming freshman in the fall for the University of Victoria Vikes in U Sports are homegrown.
They include Brea Christie of Royal Bay, Aislinn Shinomura from Reynolds, Dari Cote and Eyla Payne, both from Ecole Victor Brodeur, Megan Reist-Millward of Mount Douglas and Trinity Kettyls from Lambrick Park.
Several of them were on display Tuesday in the Lower Island Ryan Cup quarter-finals, including Christie in the battle of the Bays. Host Oak Bay, with a pedigree dating to 1929 despite a new building, outlasted two-year-old newbie school Royal Bay 2-0 despite a solid effort by Christie.
Several of the high school stars know each other from the Vancouver Island Wave rep program away from school.
“It’s kind of fun because a Wave teammate may give you a push out there in school play, and you turn and smile,” said Christie.
“You see their skill sets differently in school league opposition than you do as a Wave teammate.”
As for her impending U Sports career, Christie is looking forward to the Vikes.
“I’m excited to be playing for my hometown university where I will have the support of my family and friends,” said Christie.
“I’m fortunate because not many university athletes have that opportunity.”
Although her double-A No. 3 Ravens lost to the triple-A No. 2 Breakers on Tuesday, Christie is proud of having blazed a trail the past two years as among the first Ravens athletes to play for the new school.
“Everything we did started a new tradition,” she said.
The Breakers, meanwhile, are a provincial power and showed it on goals by Maddy Trimmer and Kara Butler.
“We play calm until we find gaps and break the opposition down,” said Trimmer, one of the Grade 11s on a young Oak Bay squad.
Emiko Hourston is another of those Grade 11 Breakers. “We work for each other and we play for each other,” she said.
In Tuesday’s other Ryan Cup quarter-finals, Shinomura and the triple-A top-rated Reynolds Roadrunners blanked the double-A fourth-seed Lambrick Park Lions 1-0; the double-A second-seed St. Michaels University School Blue Jags edged the triple-A No. 3 Stelly’s Stingers 1-0; and the double-A top-ranked Glenlyon Norfolk Gryphons out-ran triple-A No. 4 Spectrum 3-2.
The semifinals are Thursday with Reynolds and SMUS meeting at Braefoot Park and Oak Bay visiting GNS, both at 3:15. The 2017 Ryan Cup final is next Tuesday at UVic.