Kane Beckman and Zachary Wildman competed for Team Edmonton at the second annual FCBESCOLA national championships held in Toronto last weekend.
Kevin McBain
of The Clarion
Two young soccer players from the Kindersley area just returned from representing Team Edmonton in a national soccer tournament.
Zachary Wildman and Kane Beckman competed for the under-16 and under-10 teams respectively in the second annual FCBESCOLA national tournament held in Toronto from Sept. 28 to Oct. 1.
The tournament brings together academy and club teams from five FCBESCOLA soccer schools in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver. The academies were set up in partnership with FC Barcelona and BCN Sports, a Canadian-based company established in 2013 with the aim of delivering top-quality sports and educational programs for youth.
Wildman and Beckman participated in a FC Barcelona summer camp in Saskatoon in July and were invited to compete with Edmonton in the tournament.
This is the second year for the tournament. Last year, the event was held in Vancouver.
[emember_protected for=”2″ custom_msg=’For more on this story, please see the Oct. 4 print edition of The Clarion.’]
Wildman, a 2003-born player, played defence for the team that had a 13-man roster. He said that he really enjoyed the experience.
“I really enjoyed it. We played a lot of games in a very short amount of time,” he said.
The team ended up playing eight games in just four days and made it to the finals, where they lost 2-1 to Toronto.
The under-16 pool consisted of four teams from Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Edmonton.
The teams played each other twice during the round-robin. They defeated Montreal twice,; split games with Ottawa and lost both to Toronto.
They defeated Ottawa in the semifinals to advance to the finals.
Wildman said that all of the teams were pretty even and his take-away from competing in the tournament was learning how to be mentally prepared to play that many games in such a short time.
Wildman has played soccer since he was seven years old and wants to continue to play and get better.
Beckman, a 2008-born player, played defence with his under-10 team.
There were seven teams in his division, coming from the Toronto, Montreal, Ottaw, Vancouver and the Edmonton soccer academies. Vancouver and Edmonton also brought teams with players chosen from camps that they held in the area.
Although the team didn’t fare to well on the scoreboard, the experience was incredible he said.
“It was awesome,” he said.
A highlight for Kane was tying the academy team from Vancouver.
“Just to be chosen to go is quite an accomplishment,” said his father, Tyrel.
He, like Wildman, said that soccer is his favourite sport and he wants to continue to play and improve.
Both players will now prepare to play for their respective Kindersley Storm teams that begin practise next week.
[/emember_protected]
© Kindersley Clarion
