The Niagara United Juventus under-13 Girls I-Model soccer team made a huge statement to the rest of the province at a recent tournament.
Competing in the Top Rated Series tournament in Toronto, one of the top tournaments offered in the province, the girls made it all the way to the final in the top division before falling 2-0 to London Alliance.
“All the top teams play in it and we were basically playing up and we got placed in the top division,” head coach Paolo Sirianni said. “We entered the tournament with the idea of ‘Let’s play a lot of top teams across the province and just see where we are.’ We wanted to see how we held up against them.”
The answer was very well indeed as the team went 3-0 in the round-robin to qualify for the final.
Along the way to the championship game, the squad defeated: the North Toronto Nitros OPDL 2-1 on goals by Daytona Wiens and Chloe Carter; the Unionville Millikens OPDL 3-1 thanks to goals by Wiens, Riley Woehl and Mia Clark; and, the Woodbridge Strikers OPDL 3-2 on a pair of goals by Wiens and a single tally by Mia Clark.
“It was a great experience playing against all the top teams and we were really happy with how the girls played against some of the top teams in the province,” he said. “It is as tough a tournament as you are going to find in the province because OPDL takes a week off so their teams can go to these games.”
Ironically, the two teams that made the final were the only non-OPDL teams.
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