After a trip to the all-Ontarios earlier this month, the Muskie girls’ soccer team is looking forward to attending the provincial showdown again next season.
With the partial retirement of long-time coach Struchan Gilson at the end of this season, Caroline Spencer will take over and try to lead the girls to another great season next spring.
“Having been to OFSAA and seen the calibre of the other teams, we are definitely in the ballpark,” said Spencer.
The team will try to work on game strategy and becoming more physical next year, she noted.
“It seems like that’s where we had most of our problems, being run off the ball,” Spencer remarked.
The Muskies were knocked out of OFSAA without reaching the quarter-finals, finishing with a loss and two ties.
“We could have won those two games,” said Spencer, sharing Gilson’s opinion that the team matched others at the tournament on skill level, they just couldn’t get the ball in the net.
“It made me feel like we are doing the right thing when we coach these kids,” she added. “It makes me feel like we can coach these girls to that calibre.”
Spencer plans to continue to work on the team’s footwork, and expects assistant coach Char Bliss to go on with the physical training the girls were doing all this season.
“I think our Grade 9s, having been to OFSAA and seen what’s there, they want to go back,” Spencer said.
While the Muskies attended the tournament this season as the second-place team from NWOSSAA (the result of a silver medal for St. Ignatius the previous season), things may or may not work out the same way next year, said Spencer.
NWOSSAA got that second berth because the 2003 gold-medal winners, Char-Lan, already was the host team, meaning Sudbury had two spots in the tournament already and could not have a third.
As such, that opportunity was passed on to the association represented by the silver medal-winning team.
Next year, said Spencer, Thunder Bay will be hosting the provincials on the girls’ side and, depending on the arrangement made by OFSAA, the Muskies might have to win NWOSSAA to advance to the all-Ontarios.
“We may not be able to piggyback, we may have to win NWOSSAA outright,” she noted. “But my theory is, to heck with them, let’s win NWOSSAA.”
The black-and-gold will lose seven players, including six starters, to graduation but a core group will remain, said Spencer.
Bliss will remain with the team as an assistant and Spencer expects Tammy McLean to return, as well, though she is still finalizing her schedule.
Gilson, who had been the head coach of the team for 19 years, plans to work with the younger players on basic skills.
“I’ve decided it’s time for me to back off,” he said.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
