Womens soccer team heads to Nationals

Pride and excitement are beaming from the women's soccer team as they prepare to head out west.

After winning the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association (OCAA) gold medal, the Fanshawe Falcon women's soccer team will head to Langara College in British Columbia to play in the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association (CCAA) national tournament.

Eva Havaris and her coaching staff are ecstatic about the team's season, and feel very proud for their player's accomplishment.

“We're obviously very excited, and very proud of what the girls achieved,” Havaris said. ”They did it with a lot of hard work, they did it by sticking to our game plan, by listening to us and doing what we asked of them, and they came together as a team. So we're really proud of them, really proud.”

Team captain Emily Costello said she and the players are very thrilled with the victory.

“As a team we're pretty pumped, and pretty stoked on going to BC,” Costello said. “We worked hard all season, now we're just trying to keep going with our wins and do our best.”

Costello also said it was satisfying to prove some critics wrong.

“Its nice that our hard work paid off, we were expecting to have a rebuilding year, but instead it was a championship year,” Costello said.

“We won provincials and nobody thought we would get as far as we did, and everyone is pretty stoked and the school is stoked for us, it's kind of nice and now we've got everyone behind us going into nationals.”

Unfortunately the Falcons will be without their freshman sensation, OCAA leading scorer, OCAA rookie of the year, and OCAA All-star Melissa Elie for the CCAA tournament. Elie seriously injured her knee after she scored the OCAA clinching penalty kick against Sheridan.

Despite losing their star player, Havaris still expects the team to succeed heading into the CCAA tournament.

“Nationals is a different story,” said Havaris. “We're going there and I would like to see us go to the medal round, whether it's first, second or third but it would be a really good achievement if we made that round. At this point, I don't think we'll go number one but we're going to compete as best we can.”

The team flies out to BC this week, and the CCAA tournament will run at Langara College from November 9 to 12.