BC Premier League: Mountain U. U16 Girls enter Whitecaps FC program
BC Premier League U16 Mountain United team boasts 10 ‘Caps prospects
The U16 Girls Mountain FC club is sending 10 players to the Whitecaps FC elite development program. Photo: Mountain FC.
By Ross Armour
A total of 10 girls from Mountain United‘s U16 soccer squad will join up with the Vancouver Whitecaps immediately after this weekend.
The team will host South Fraser FC at Burnaby Lake sports complex on Sunday in the league cup finals of the BC Premier League, and this will be the last game that the team will play together as a group.
The 10 selected girls will then begin training full-time as part of the Whitecaps FC Girls Elite Program.
The Mountain United team, based in Burnaby, has been trained by coach Lee Tregonning since January of this annual year. Tregonning is a former youth player with Cardiff City and Luton Town in the United Kingdom.
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“To move one girl on to the Whitecaps, that would have been a reward, but to move 10 on is a fantastic award and I’m very proud indeed,” he said.
Tregonning, originally from Wales, hold his UEFA “B” licence and has watched the girls progress as players over the last 11 months.
“They’ve definitely grown as players and they’re all very like-minded,” he said. “They’ve been training three times every week and their technical aspects have certainly grown due to playing good quality games week in week out.”
The coach commented that the players’ development has been aided by the step up in class that is brought about by participating in the premier league, something he says the “old metro system” could not offer.
The Whitecaps youth program, that started this past September, will see the girls making the step up to train five times each week and play one competitive game on the weekend. It runs from September to July.
Whitecapsfc.com confirms that players selected for the full-time program are done so by invitation only, after a series of evaluations. The program will be based out of the ‘Caps’ training centre at Simon Fraser University and the players will study team concepts, tactics, injury prevention and nutrition for athletes amongst other concepts.
Tregonning also confirmed that the players will join up with other girls who were born in the years of 1995 and 1996.
The 10 girls heading into the Whitecaps program are as Rebecca Defer, Priya Sandhu, Ruby Sandhu, Reetu Johal, Margaret Hadley, Alessia Azermadhi, Simmrin Dhaliwal, Selena Odegard, Sessen Stevens and Seina Kashima.
The team’s final on Sunday kicks off at 7:30 p.m. and Beacon News will be bringing you an exclusive match report from the game.
Category: Soccer
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