The mantra this high school sports season might just read Spectrum is Super. Or, at least very, very good. The Saanich school’s big year continued this week with the Thunder winning the Island girls’ Triple-A soccer championship for the first time.
This spring the school also won the sa国际传媒 boys’ Quad-A high school basketball championship for the first time in its history, which dates to 1932 as Mount View Secondary.
Both squads have been powered by an extraordinary class of Grade 11s, with only three Grade 12s on the boys’ champion basketball team, and none on the girls’ soccer team.
“It’s a special group of Grade 11s,” said Spectrum girls’ soccer coach Dom Butcher, who is also the school’s athletic director.
“It’s been an interesting year with so much potential for next season as well. We have a growing catchment area of young families and we are now holding our catchment kids. It’s been tough for Spectrum to do that in the [recent] past in sports.”
The school more than held its own in boys’ soccer with 10 Colonist Cup championships, but mostly during Mount View days, with players such as Olympian and 34-time sa国际传媒 capped Bob Bolitho and Super Bowl champion and top-25 all-time NFL scoring kicker Ed Murray.
Now it’s the girls putting their best cleats forward. The Spectrum team contains seven players from the elite Island Wave program.
“We have a lot of high-performance players, who will be looking at U Sports in a couple of years, but we had key players who were out with injury for much of the season,” said Butcher.
Janeina Monge scored the tying goal at the death at 90 minutes in the Island championship game in Nanaimo on Tuesday as Spectrum rallied from a 2-0 deficit against the Reynolds Roadrunners to eventually win on penalty kicks.
Clara Chudley had four goals in the Island tournament for Spectrum with Brooklyn Robinson and Kate Noyce other standouts for the Thunder.
Spectrum and Reynolds advance to the Triple-A high school sa国际传媒 championship tournament May 29-June 1 at Athletic Park in Cloverdale. The Royal Bay Ravens placed third and the Oak Bay Breakers fourth in the Island championship tournament.
“Our players are very excited about provincials. We will have most of our injured players back and that bodes well,” said Butcher.
Meanwhile, the Mark Isfeld Ice of Courtenay won the girls’ high school soccer Double-A Island championship with St. Michaels University School second, Shawnigan Lake School third and Brentwood College fourth. All four teams qualified for the Double-A provincial tournament in Burnaby.
CORNER KICKS: Royal Bay and Claremont Secondary will battle for the Greater Victoria playoff championship title next Thursday when the Ryan Cup final takes place at Starlight Stadium in Langford. Kickoff is 5:30 p.m.
