A total of 10 girls from Mountain United FC‘s U-16 soccer squad have begun training full-time with Vancouver Whitecaps FC's U-18 Girls Elite program following the conclusion of the inaugural EA SPORTS BC Soccer Premier League last weekend.
The 10 girls who've been welcomed into the Girls Elite program are Alessia Azermadhi, Rebecca Defer, Simmrin Dhaliwal, Margaret Hadley, Reetu Johal, Seina Kashima, Selena Odegard, Priya Sandhu, Ruby Sandhu, and Sessen Stevens.
The Mountain United FC U-16 girls team, based in Burnaby, took home the BCSPL U-16 cup final this past weekend in an exciting shootout victory over South Fraser FC.
The squad 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.
“To move one girl on to Whitecaps FC, 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.
Playing with Whitecaps FC Girls Elite, which started a new season 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.
Players selected for the full-time program are done so by invitation only, after a series of evaluations. The program is 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.
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