St. Albert is now home to some of the top soccer players in Alberta after the St. Albert Impact took gold at the indoor soccer provincial championships.
The St. Albert Impact U17 Tier 1 Boys team beat Edmonton’s Northside United 2-1 in the gold medal game of the Alberta Soccer Association’s indoor provincial championships held March 17 at Calgary’s Macron Performance Centre.
St. Albert Impact coach Chris Clarke said this was the first time that this group of players, many of whom he had coached for their entire soccer careers, had ever won gold at provincials.
“It was a lot of hard work and a lot of effort,” he said, and a very emotional outcome.
Underdog victory
Team captain and Bellerose Grade 11 student Carter Turcotte said the Impact struggled early in the season and just barely managed to pick up the points it needed to qualify for provincials in its last two regular season games.
Clarke said Impact player Johnathan Teixeira scored the first goal of the final about 10 minutes into the game. Northside United tied it up eight minutes into the second half, and Teixeira scored the winning goal six minutes before the end. There followed an agonizing six minute stretch where the Impact had to fend off Northside’s efforts to close the gap.
“It felt like that last six or seven minutes took about 10 hours,” Clarke said.
Clarke said Teixeira was an exceptionally skilled striker who scored three out of the six goals the Impact made during last week’s tournament (which ran from March 15 to 17).
“The kid was on fire.”
Teixeira, a Grade 11 student at St. Albert Catholic, said he had a bit of rivalry going with one his friends on the Northside United team that may have factored into the final.
“I scored the first goal, he scored the second goal, and I was like, ‘I can’t let him have the win,’ so I had to score one more goal and put it away for us.”
Teixeira said Northside United had a rock-solid defence, and that the only shots on goal he got all game were the ones that scored.
Turcotte said everyone on the team rushed onto the field cheering when the final whistle blew.
“It was something I’d been chasing for years now,” he said of the provincial championship, noting that he and his teammates had fallen short of it several times before.
“I felt so accomplished in that we finally did it. I was finally able to hold this and lift this and celebrate with everyone I cared about.”
Next stop: nationals?
Clarke said the Impact’s U17 Tier 1 Boys now have their sights on the outdoor provincial championship later this year. A win there would send them to the national championships.
“Remember this feeling and remember the work it took to do it,” was his advice to his players.
“Keep that feeling as we get prepared to do it again.”
Turcotte said St. Albert Impact is now the team to beat in Alberta, and will only get better as it recruits new players during this week’s tryouts.
“I think we have a good chance to make it back-to-back [provincial] golds and go to nationals.”
