A long serving coach is hoping a significant change in the Richmond Senior Boys Soccer League landscape this season is only temporary.
The McMath Wildcats continued their city dominance with a 2-0 win over the McNair Marlins in last week’s final. The concern is just how short of path it was to earn Richmond bragging rights.
Out of a potential 11 teams, this year’s league featured just five. That’s a drop of two teams from last season and four from the 2013 campaign.
The Wildcats and Marlins were joined by Richmond Colts, McRoberts Strikers and Hugh Boyd Trojans. With declining enrollment throughout the city, each school is classified at the AA level this season. It’s believed to be the first time not one team is at the AAA flight for larger schools since the all-city league was formed. The last time McMath competed at AA was about eight years ago.
The Wildcats, Marlins, Strikers and Colts all advanced to this week’s Lower Mainland AA Championships.
Longtime community soccer coach Mike Quinn has been involved with the McMath program since 2005, when he took on the junior team and moved up to senior three years later. He suggests there are a number of factors behind the reduced number of teams this season.
“Finding people to run the program, from either within or outside of school, is always a challenge,” said Quinn, who coached many years with the Richmond United Metro program. “Then finding enough kids to commit can be difficult too. I know there are B.C. Premier and Metro coaches that don’t want their players participating in high school soccer for a variety of reasons.
“I think it’s a wonderful experience getting an opportunity to play with your friends from school. We have (B.C. Premier), Metro and Gold level players on our team. They never would get a chance to play together otherwise.”
The hope is two or three schools return next season and the all-Richmond format is back to healthy numbers.
“It would be very unfortunate if it ever got to the point where we had to join the Vancouver league,” continued Quinn. “All the extra travel would be a huge inconvenience. We had to add exhibition games to our schedule this season just to ensure the kids got their money’s worth.”
The Wildcats have a 20-player roster but only 13 were available for the city final. Still, they put together a solid 80 minutes with goals from Liam Fitzmaurice and Davis Poon.
“We didn’t have our strongest line-up but it was the best our best performance as a team this season,” added Quinn.
The Wildcats’ strong play continued during the Lower Mainland Championships — opening the tournament with a 4-0 win over McRoberts. Daniel Warmling led the way with a pair of goals, Fitzmaurice and Logan Hooper also scored
McMath then advanced to the final and locked up a provincial berth with a 3-1 win over John Oliver on Wednesday. Sean Minato scored twice. Mathias Melaku had the other.
The Mainland final goes on Monday with McMath taking on the Marlins who have also locked up a spot in the provincials, slated for Nov. 23-25 in Burnaby.
