Yellowknife's newest soccer club has planted itself a seed it hopes will grow into something big.
The Yk Galaxy Soccer Club finished its first-ever summer season at the Fieldhouse on July 29 with the final games of its Champions Cup. The players were split into U10 and U13/U16 divisions to play games with championship games for each division happening on the final day.
Dillon Torindo, the club's general manager, said it was a nice way to end the summer season.
“We had about 45 kids that showed up,” he said. “We would have had more but some were out of town, about 20 were out of town.”
The players were split into two teams in each division and were given the names Galaxy Stars and Galaxy North.
Each division had two games on July 28 to get a sense of whether the teams were fairly balanced, said Torindo, and it appeared that they were.
“The games were really close so we didn't have to change any of the teams around,” he said.
In the championship games, the Galaxy Stars won both of them in tight games; the U10 division final went to penalty kicks.
“It was really intense,” said Torindo of the U10 game. “The parents were all there and it was a big crowd so that made things more exciting. It was great to have all of them there to support the kids.”
There were awards to be handed out for each division, such as the most valuable players. Liam Fenley was the U10 division MVP while Hasan Livingstone took the honours for the U13/U16 division.
If you add up the total number of players both in town for the tournament and those out of town, 65 players were on the fields this summer season and Torindo said there were more ready to jump in and join.
“We had 20 players on a waiting list,” he said. “It looks like the numbers are going to go higher, maybe as much as 90 or even 100 for the fall.”
Can the club handle as many as 100 players? Torindo said if the groups are organized properly, it shouldn't be a problem.
“We have five coaches right now,” he said. “We'll probably split it into U9, U11, U13 and so on so it's all divided where we have around 25 per group. We won't do one big group.”
Things could be looking up for the group and it was announced on Aug. 7 that the club is now a full member of NWT Soccer. That allows the club to get in on such things as coaching clinics and player development clinics.
Torindo said a chance conversation with Huw Morris, NWT Soccer's technical director, convinced him that he should work toward getting the club under the organization's umbrella.
“He told me it would be a huge benefit to join up with NWT Soccer,” he said. “He said it would be a big help to the program so I had a meeting with them and talked about how we can improve the club and what we could do to expand and help more kids play soccer.”