Dr. Charles Best Blue Devils and the Centennial Centaurs performed admirably at last weekend's B.C. AAA senior girls high school soccer championships in Surrey.
Only a handful of teams showed a touch better.
The Blue Devils took fourth spot while the Cents settled for sixth in the 16-team affair, with Surrey's Panorama Ridge Thunder shaving Kelowna's Mt. Boucherie Bears 1-0 in Saturday's championship game at Newton Athletic Park.
The Thunder bounced Best 4-1 in Friday's semifinals, with the Blue Devils wrapping up tournament play with another 4-1 defeat to the third-place Handsworth Royals of North Vancouver. Centennial was blanked 2-0 by the Point Grey Greyhounds in the battle for fifth spot.
"The school and I are still very proud of this achievement, since the team was mostly made up of junior players from Grades 9 and 10. The future looks promising," said Blue Devils head coach Alfonso Napoletano, who steered the squad to a 19-3 overall record this season. "The team is already looking forward to next year to again try to qualify for the provincials and hopefully do even better."
The Blue Devils finished with two wins and a tie in their four-team round-robin pool, with victories over South Kamloops (2-1) and North Delta's Seaquam Seahawks (5-0) while knotting Campbell River's Carihi (0-0), to placed first via goal differential before falling in the semis to the Thunder.
Against Panorama Ridge, the score was tied in the second 1-1 after Best's Andrea Perrota tallied on a great finish, only to have the eventual-champion Thunder strike for three goals in the final 20 minutes to prevail.
Not helping matters for the Blue Devils was losing star defender Nadia Karmali, who went on to make the Commissioner's 11 all-star squad, to injury early in the game.
"It was disheartening loss because for most of the game we were the better team," Napoletano said.
The Centaurs, meanwhile, grabbed second in their round-robin pool with victories over Victoria's Claremont Spartans (3-1) and Surrey's Fleetwood Park Dragons (2-0), coupled with a loss to Handsworth (3-1).
After downing the Kitsilano Blue Demons 1-0 in one of Friday's cross-over matches, the Cents simply ran out of steam the next day versus Point Grey. Olivia Aguiar was Centennial's recipient of Commissioner's 11 all-star honours.
"We were down to 11 players, no subs, everyone exhausted [and] banged up," said Centaurs head coach Larry Moro. "It wasn't an artistic success but we competed hard as always."
Centennial concluded the season with an 18-5-1 overall record.
