Whitehorse United sent five teams to the Richmond Thanksgiving soccer tournament in Richmond, B.C. recently.

The 30th annual tourney took place Oct. 7-8.

The five teams were composed of a total of 68 players. The players had nine coaches, five managers and at least 20 supporting chaperones accompany them.

Of the five teams, three were female. The list included the U12, U14 and U16 girls teams and the U12 and U14 boys teams.

The Star spoke to one of the coaches of the U14 boys, Paul Inglis.

“It was good,” he said. “We ended up winning our division. A lot of fun. We won all our games, which we’ve never done before. Previously, this was our fifth tournament playing 11 (players) outside and we only won one game previously. So to win all four was pretty exciting.”

When asked about the consistency of his team, Inglis said, “It was mostly smooth sailing, to be honest. We scored first and early in each game. The third game was against another team that was winning pretty comfortably as well. So we knew that would be a tough game. And we ended up scoring in the first few minutes. And then it was a really close game until part-way through the second half, when we scored another one, and then the other team kind of faded away after that.”

Inglis felt very proud of his U14 boys.

“It was exciting. I mean, to be honest, coming through this made me realize that it’s really hard for us to know where we fit, because we don’t have a league out here, right? Our warmup games were against an adult co-ed rec team. And so we don’t have a good sense of where we fit in other tournaments, which division we should be in. So we signed up for div three in this one and we pretty comfortably won it. So, obviously, from that, we’re going to try out div two next year and see how that goes. We have previously gone to tournaments, signed up for div three, got pushed into (division) four and gotten pretty comprehensively beaten so it’s a bit hard to know; each tournament is different. But this was a fun tournament. It was really well run, really well organized, so kudos to the Richmond United Football Club for putting on an awesome tournament. And we’d like to come back to this. But if we do, we’ll know that we can play up a division. So that’s exciting.”

The kids were also ecstatic after their tournament win.

“They were super excited,” related Inglis. “We haven’t had much success, going down. It’s a good group of kids, they have a lot of fun together. We make a point of making sure that fun is a big part of it and then we don’t stress too much about the scores. So even when we’ve gone to tournaments and not done particularly well, we still end up having fun at the tournament. It’s a big event, right? Going on a trip like that. It was nice to have a bit of success, because we haven’t had any. We’ve gone to tournaments and been in games and close. Our last tournament was in Kamloops and we lost two really close games and we tied two games and then we could have won any of those, but to actually win, it’s pretty exciting. For sure.”

When asked about what this win means for the future of Yukon Soccer, Inglis said, “Well, I think it means a few things. I think it means it shows that we need to pick the tournaments we go to. You know, we’ve gone to tournaments that were showcase tournaments that were way above our level.

“But I know it’ll give some of the younger kids some real enthusiasm because just seeing an older team win something can provide a lot of motivation and a lot of excitement. So I think that’ll be really cool for the younger Whitehorse United Football Club teams and it’s gonna motivate our guys. They’re going to be pretty keen on that and they’re gonna go down to the next tournament and thinking that they could do something, which is pretty motivating as well.”

Inglis said his team will be shifting to indoor soccer now until April at the Field house in the Canada Games Centre.

They don’t have any tournaments planned at this time, but Inglis pointed out that the Arctic Winter Games are coming up. He said that that will include some of their players but not all of them, as only nine players go to the Games.

“We had 16 go to the tournament; we’ve got about 20 on the team. So that can be really disruptive but we’re hoping to get through that. We got to the last one without losing. We lost a couple of players after that, but we managed to get through it, so I’m hoping we can do the same this time. And then keep everybody together. Keep everybody around and having fun over the winter and then we’re gonna aim to go back to the Kamloops tournament that we went to May long weekend this year. We want to go back to that one.”

When asked about standout players, Inglis said he felt the entire team deserved praise.

“I would like to really emphasize just how much of a team this is. These guys get along, really. They had a lot of fun together. I think part of the success comes from them having fun. They’re not hard on each other. They’re really supportive of each other. It’s a pretty awesome group. I also kind of want to give a bit of a shout out to the parents that we’ve got. They’re all really supportive.

“And also these guys have been doing fundraising to help pay for the tournament. And they put together a couple work crews to help people get ready for winter by raking leaves, stacking wood and that kind of thing. And that’s been really awesome too. They’ve been out working really hard, trying to raise money and I think something even kind of more notable about that is that they’re raising money, not just for themselves, but the whole point of this is to raise some money to be able to play. There’s some players that are going to have a much harder time of paying to go to a tournament like this. It’s expensive to go to a tournament like this and so the idea of fundraising is that it’s a real team thing and it is to help other families that needed a little bit more and all working together and they’ve had a ton of fun doing it, but they’ve been working really hard. That’s been really awesome to see.”

Inglis added, “I’d like to give a shoutout also to Whitehorse United Football Club. This whole thing is all volunteer driven. There’s one part-time paid employee. There’s a lot that gets done because there are hundreds and hundreds of kids that play for Whitehorse United and it’s a ton of work and it’s almost all volunteer driven. I think the volunteers don’t get enough of a pat on the back because it really makes a difference for a lot of these kids.

“I know that there are some kids that coming into soccer is the highlight of their week. And it all comes down to the volunteers that are on the board and that do all of the support work for Whitehorse United.”