The annual Sunbreaker soccer tournament in Camrose held over the weekend turned out to be a good occasion for the eight Ponoka teams taking part, but not one for medals or bragging rights.
Ponoka boys showed up in full roster at Camrose’s Rudy Swanson Recreation Park with U18, U16, U14 in addition to two U12 boys’ teams taking up the challenge of the competition. As for girls, U16, U14 and U12 teams were listed as participants.
No Ponoka team made it to the gold medal game but the closest any of the Storm teams got to any medal was one of the U12 boys’ teams, who were not good enough to roll over Lacombe.
The results for the Ponoka teams were as follows:
U18 boys handsomely beat Camrose 4-1 but lost to Lacombe 2-1 to miss the chance to go to finals.
U16 boys won over Lacombe by 1-0 but lost to Sylvan with same score.
As for U14 boys, they were good enough to to trounce Rocky Mountain House 6-2, but lost to Red Deer 4-3.
Of the the two U12 boys teams, Y team lost to Camrose 8-1 and made an early exit while U12 United boys team beat the hosts Camrose with an impressive score of 11-3 before defeating Wetaskiwin 10-2. In the semi-finals, however, they could not resist the onslaught by the Lacombe team and lost by a score 9-2.
On the girls’ side, U16 team lost to Lacombe 6-1 but drew 1-1 with Stettler.
U14 girls lost both of their games, 5-2 to Camrose and 3-1 to Stettler, while U12 girls lost 5-1 to Rocky Mountain House and 4-0 to Camrose.
U12 girls’ coach Steve Greene said he was expecting good things to come from his team after their performance in their first game together.
Men’s soccer season underway
Meanwhile, regular season games got underway in the Battle River Men’s Soccer League last weekend with Ponoka’s Storm winning their first match against Diablos by a score of 2-1.
Scorers for Ponoka were Elzard Visscher and Eric Ehscheid.
Ponoka men’s next home game will be on Monday, May 23 at 6 p.m hosting Stettler’s newly assembled team.