It’s a sprint to the finish in the Foothills Athletic Council.
The Holy Trinity Academy Knights and Foothills Falcons will look to make up ground on the frontrunning Canmore Wolverines with the FAC senior girls soccer season wrapping up this week.
“I had 10 veterans coming back and had to fill the spots and basically what we looked for is really good attitudes,” said Knights coach Nathan Len. “This is probably the funnest group of girls that I’ve had the pleasure of coaching.
“With any new team when you bring them together, it really took a few games for them to start to gel and it’s looking really promising.”
Canmore leads the four-team loop with a 4-0 record, the Knights sit second with a 3-1 mark, with the Falcons in third and Strathmore in fourth.
HTA and Foothills will meet in the regular season finale on Oct. 6, a 4:30 p.m. start at Bill Robertson Park. The Knights took the first meeting by a 2-1 count.
“There’s always that competitive spirit when the two Okotoks teams play,” Len said. “And my team always lives for that game.”
The Knights boast a highly-skilled group of club players with Gracyn Sekura, Julian Len and Sarah Neuls, a Grade 10, playing key roles in attack, the coach added.
Len said the team has been boosted by the addition of a group of athletes relatively new to the sport in Katherine Jerrom, Eva Gustafson, Shailyn Oickle and Emma Glowatsky.
“The future is bright for next year,” the coach added. “I think we’re going to have a lot of returning players next year.”
Building up interest in the program and increasing its numbers have been early takeaways for the Foothills brass.
“When I took over the team it was like, beg for people, get as many as you can because we never get enough who show up,” said Falcons coach Brittney Felske, in her first year in the role.
“And the tryout was outstanding, we had 28 girls show up and we took 18 and the 18 have just been outstanding and working and working on building that community.”
On the pitch, the Falcons have shown steady improvement, the coach added, with the season getting going so early into the school year.
Felske listed Grade 12s Liv Kaun and Grace Karasz as key leaders for the Comp.
“(Liv) has just been outstanding in getting the team going and carrying that through and showing the strength and courage on the field and is really committed to that,” the coach said. “(Grace) has just been outstanding in building support for the team, she’s a really strong communicator on and off the field.
“Her positivity and optimism has carried us through a lot of our games.”
Following the final week of regular season action, the playoff round will see the top two seeds square off for the FAC championship and three versus four seeds battle for bronze on Oct. 12.
The South Central Zone championship is expected to be held in Canmore the following week.
