Joey Payeur
The tears in Rebecca Tolen’s eyes were that of sadness from a dream unrealized, but also of unabashed satisfaction at her team’s incredible effort.
“I was so proud, I cried–the sunglasses had to stay on,” the coach said of her emotional response to the Rainy River Owls’ girls’ soccer team coming within an eyelash of capturing the NorWOSSA ‘A’ championship in Sioux Lookout.
Following a 2-1 semi-final shootout win over the host Warriors (4-2 on penalty kicks), the Owls pushed the heavily-favoured St. Thomas Aquinas Saints (Kenora) to another shootout after regulation and overtime yielded no goals by either team.
The Saints finally prevailed when Angele McDonald and MacKenzie Turcotte booted penalty kicks past Owls’ keeper Madison Whetzel to give them a 1-0 victory (2-0 in the shootout) and a berth at the OFSAA ‘A’ girls’ tournament May 31-June 2 in Toronto.
“You know it wasn’t a difficult way to end the season,” insisted Tolen, whose team’s lone shootout marker came from graduating senior Bethany Sinninghe in her final high school match.
“Our goal was second,” she noted. “We knew T.A. was a lot stronger than we were and that we would have to really play to even beat Q.E.
“To get to 0-0 after overtime with T.A. was beyond our wildest dreams.
“We were all so excited by the shutout,” Tolen added. “You have no idea how hard they had to work just to achieve that.
“I told them I couldn’t have asked for anything more.
“It was such an awesome moment,” she added.
“The hardest I have ever seen them work as a team, their support for each other, and the fact that it was the last time I will ever coach my daughter and the girls she has grown up with made me as a coach and a mom so proud.”
In the semi-final, Mika Kooistra provided the regulation goal for the Owls, spinning her body around and kicking the ball out of the air off a pass from Abbey Tolen.
Whetzel then proved heroic in the shootout, stopping three of five Warriors point blank.
Rainy River’s snipers took care of the rest as Madison Brown, Sinninghe, Kooistra, and Alexa Veldhuisen all found the back of the net.
“It really was a thrilling win,” enthused Tolen. “After our regular-season games, we went back to Rainy to work on the basics.
“The reason we won against Sioux [Lookout] is that we wanted that ball more than they did,” she noted.
“We fought for every single 50-50 ball, and didn’t stand back and wait to see what Sioux was going to do.
“[Whetzel] was also on fire as a goalie and aggressively attacked any ball that came into her 18-yard box,” Tolen lauded.
“We set the pace of the game and challenged Sioux, forcing them to make mistakes,” she noted.
“Our girls were also dead-on in the shootout and our goalie made one amazing save that gave us the advantage.”
Tolen said she was worried if her team would have anything left for the final after investing so much energy in the semi-final, but found out her troops had plenty more to give.
“They dug deep and gave T.A. one heck of a game,” she remarked.
“The girls really didn’t expect to win against T.A.,” Tolen admitted. “They just wanted to improve their standing against them, so they went out there with a ‘We have nothing to lose’ attitude.
“I don’t think T.A. was expecting it at all.”
Tolen said the key to keeping the Saints at bay was the Owls’ ability to take away time and space from their shooters.
“T.A. controlled a good part of the game against us but we did not give them many opportunities to get good shots off,” she recalled.
“Our defence worked incredibly hard to clear our end,” she added. “It was nerve-wracking, to say the least.
“Again, it was challenging for every 50-50 ball that kept us in the game,” Tolen stressed.
“We just didn’t give them time to set up and get organized.”
The road ahead for the Owls will be difficult, who only are losing four players to graduation.
But it’s a significant quartet in the form of Brown, Sinninghe, Tolen, and Alia Big George.
“Next year is looking similar to this year,” Tolen said. “We trained players to fill the holes that are being made by our graduates, although these will be big holes to fill.
“The other teams have a lot of returning players so it should be interesting.”
Assisting Tolen in the transition will be Gary Coleman, who moved to Rainy River from Winnipeg, where Tolen said he was very involved in soccer.
“[Coleman] has been an incredible addition to our coaching staff,” Tolen said.
“We are taking full advantage of him.”
In boys’ action, Rainy River ended up tied for third for the season after losing a 1-0 nail-biter to Sioux Lookout.
The winning goal came off a penalty kick after an Owls’ player was flagged for a hand ball inside their 18-yard box even though his hands were up against his body.
Sioux Lookout went on to beat St. Thomas Aquinas in a shootout in the final to qualify for OFSAA on June 1-3 in Windsor.
