United Soccer U14 Silver

The Swift Current United Under-14 Girls earned a provincial silver medal in the Saskatchewan Premier Soccer League this weekend in Saskatoon.

It was quite a way to wrap up their first season in the province's best league for their age group.

"I'm extremely proud of what they accomplished," said Coach Dale Perry. "We didn't know where we would be. We thought we would be competitive, but to watch them grow over the last four months and just get better it was really rewarding."

Dale Perry Interview"I don't feel bad about how we finished only getting the silver. The other team was good. We put what we had out there and on this day they were better than us, but I'm really extremely proud of my girls."

Swift Current beat the second seeded Saskatoon Lakewood Storm 2-0 in the semi-final on Friday.

"We tend to have slow starts," Perry said. "Against Lakewood we always seem to have our worst starts. They virtually pinned us in our own end for the first 8-9 minutes of the game... we started to get it working and we snapped two quick ones. We've always been very good defensively... so with the 2-0 lead it felt pretty good."

Rachel Dorais and Mackenzie Froehlich had their goals in the semi-final win.

It was another 2-0 score in the final, but a tough loss to the top seeded Saskatoon Aurora Concordes.

"They were a little more skilled than us," Perry added. "They played hard, they played aggressive. Our game was to put pressure on them and take away their time and space... what happened was they came at us pretty hard and got to a lot of balls before us. It kind of took us out of our game a little bit."

"They were very good good."

It was the first season for the U14 girls in the premier league.

There isn't much time for some of the players and the coaches as they start their Swift Current Comp High School Ardens program with tryouts on Tuesday. 9 of the players from the U14 team are eligible for the squad.

"We lost some key pieces," Perry said. "We didn't lose numbers in terms of bodies, but we lost a lot of goal scoring production, defensively play and mostly a lot of leadership."

"I think it's going to be a really exciting camp because there's going to be heavy challenge for positions. I think we'll still be offensive... but it will be by committee."

Ardens tryouts run at 6:30pm on Tuesday.