The South Delta Secondary senior boys’ soccer team’s quest for a provincial title berth ended with a pair of losses at the recent South Fraser Championships.
The Sun Devils pulled off an impressive 7-0 regular season campaign dominating its competition with 38 goals while only giving up seven.
But the South Fraser’s brought with it tough competition and SDSS lost 2-1 to Panorama Ridge and 4-2 to Fleetwood Park.
Coach Ricky Gill said injuries at the wrong time proved to be too much to overcome.
“Overall, it was a good season in terms of how we started, but injuries in the playoffs really hurt us and we had problems going forward. The depth was not there and in the first round [against Panorama] we just came out flat,” he said.
Gill said there are a lot of graduating players this year, so that will impact what next year’s team might look like.
“We had a big influx of international players this year and juniors so that makes a difference in terms of our record. We have five internationals in the starting 11,” he said. “We have a half mix of local guys and internationals and a lot of our guys also play with other club teams, so that also makes it challenging, but for sure, we want to build the program and make it better.
“Some of our young guys – we pulled up some juniors this year and obviously with the internationals, the quality was there as well. There is quality going into next year, but it’s too early to say at this point.”
This year’s roster included: Owen Holscher, Fabian Benedyczuk, Jordan Brown, Tomas Domenech, Blair Duxbury, Gustavo Garone, Javier Gomez, Benjamin Ison, Masato Karai, Haru Kodama, Jason Lim, Owen Loveless, Joshua Margaritis, Oscar McManus, Dayne Nielsen
Everett Kolebaba, Emil Siebert, Francis Smart, Eli Teichgraber, Lucas Cone and Kaden Meyer.
