ERIN – Andrea Danchuk, a grade eight pupil from Erin Public College, has been chosen for the U16 Ontario West girls’s flag soccer group.
“It was superb. I used to be speechless,” Danchuk advised the Advertiser.
“I didn’t count on to be on the group. There’s so many superb gamers that have been there.” Danchuk added making the group is “loopy.”
Tryouts started in February in Ottawa, Hamilton and Toronto.
“[Tryouts are] an extended course of for [the girls],” mentioned Soccer Ontario director of improvement and administration Emily Todd.
“And it’s additionally difficult for the ladies and women’ aspect, which is form of my focus with Soccer Ontario, as a result of we’re nonetheless within the improvement stage of these packages.”
Todd famous the problem for Soccer Ontario proper now discovering women all in favour of taking part in flag soccer.
“They may not have expertise within the sport but. And we don’t have as many packages but for girls and women, that’s one thing we’re engaged on,” Todd said.
Danchuk was positioned on what is named the “Trillium Group” for provincial tryouts as she was not a part of, and didn’t have entry to a group or membership group in Erin.
When Danchuk participated in provincials this June, it was the primary time all the women performed collectively as a group.
Nonetheless, Danchuk did nicely sufficient to make it to a four-hour improvement camp at York College. There, the women accomplished athletic testing and totally different drills to make the ultimate group.
There have been a complete of 16 women on the ultimate improvement camp, and ten moved ahead.
Ontario has two U16 girls’s flag soccer groups, an jap and western division. Every group has ten athletes and two coaches.
Lu Cruz, head coach for the U16 Ontario West group, mentioned Danchuk was fairly welcoming and was a pacesetter from the beginning.
“[Andrea] is simply past her years by way of her soccer IQ, being an awesome teammate, having that each one in mentality, and then you definitely noticed all that resumé itself on the soccer discipline when she performed at provincials,” mentioned Cruz.
The top coach had nothing however nice issues to say concerning the up-and-coming flag soccer participant.
“She was fingers down most likely the perfect offensive participant we had taking part in that day,” he defined.
Cruz added Danchuk is a superb teammate who makes teaching straightforward.
“She’s so coachable, she has all the things you need in an athlete. She research the sport continuously. However she’s additionally a pupil athlete, which I believe is tremendous vital,” he mentioned.
Danchuk has college as a excessive precedence together with flag soccer. Cruz says he can see how studious she is, and the way she is a superb pupil within the classroom and likewise an awesome buddy.
“And also you see that come on to the soccer discipline when she’s taking part in as nicely,” he mentioned.
Danchuk’s mom, Jen Danchuk, mentioned presently there may be not a lot alternative for progress in girls’s flag soccer, so her daughter had beforehand been taking part in on a co-ed group.
Whereas scrolling on social media, Jen noticed the Guelph Gryphons promoting for a deal with group. That is how she later received involved with Todd about flag soccer, which resulted in Danchuk making the Ontario West group.
Cruz says that ladies’s flag soccer continues to be a brand new program.
“It’s a grassroots program for girls in soccer, and there’s completely no funding,” he mentioned.
It’s going to value over $10,000 for the women to be despatched to the nationwide event, which runs July 30 to Aug. 2 in Nova Scotia, and every participant has to provide you with that cash on their very own.
“You’re taking a look at about $1,400 per participant that we’re looking for to lift cash for the nationals,” Cruz added. He says funding is an enormous consider girls’s sports activities, particularly in flag soccer.
To assist offset a few of these prices, the group has began a GoFundMe marketing campaign. Anybody all in favour of donating can go to gofund.me/383899a7.