Cinderella wears soccer boots, and they aren’t made of glass.
They’re forged from the stuff of champions. And the boots fit perfectly as the St. Timothy High School Thunder senior girls soccer team won the Calgary Senior High School Athletic Association Division 3 city championship Oct. 25 with a gripping 1-0 upset win over the Bishop McNally High School Timberwolves of Calgary.
It was the Thunder’s first-ever senior girls city soccer title.
“This is huge,” said elated St. Tim’s coach Randy Smith following the match at Calgary’s Glenmore Park, where purple-clad Thunder faithful filled the bleachers to cheer their team. “It’s all that more sweet where it’s the old Cinderella story. Just because it’s little-old St. Tim’s out in the country doesn’t mean we can’t make a name for ourselves and establish ourselves as being competitive.”
A second-half free kick by Seela Wulff from 16 metres out was the difference on the scoresheet.
“Make sure it didn’t go over the net,” Wulff cracked when asked what she planned for the free kick spotted just outside the penalty area following a foul. The Thunder midfielder/striker, and Team Alberta U16 player, curled the ball masterfully over and around the Bishop McNally three-man wall into the top right corner of the net. “I tried to drop it in right over where their wall was.”
But make no mistake, from the goalkeeper out, this championship was the result of a full team effort. Fullback Caitlyn DeMars stepped up her game in the post-season and gritty commitment from midfielders like Jocelyn Aab and Morgan Schmidt gave the opposition fits as the Thunder rolled through the Div. 3 playoff bracket.
“We figured out how to play and how to work with each other. We started having a lot of fun,” Wulff related as the team beat Calgary’s John G. Diefenbaker 3-0 in the Oct. 17 quarterfinal and Bowness 2-1 in the Oct. 22 semi. Bowness (6-0) and Bishop McNally (5-0-1) both finished higher in the standings that St. Tim’s (3-2-1). “We worked really hard to beat Bowness. And then we worked really hard here and I think we just all came together and all wanted to win really bad.”
If not for the stellar play of ’keeper Morgan Geremia, things could have easily gone the other way for St. Tim’s. Several key first-half saves against Bishop McNally set the table for Wulff’s second-half strike.
“She’s one of our better players,” Smith said of Geremia. “It’s the old adage, that your best players have to be your best players. She was that tonight. And she was in all the playoff games. She’s our field general. She takes on that responsibility and she’s very happy to have it. The girls respond well to her. It certainly helps us out a lot when we have someone on the field who takes that kind control and charge.”
Head coach Susan MacLellan said her girls followed through on the game plan.
“Game plan was first to the ball, tough to the ball. Go to space, just be first to the ball,” she said. “Be on them, any time they had the ball. We want one or two players on the ball.”
That commitment got them to the ball, where Prince Charming was waiting with the city championship trophy and a fairy-tale ending.
