Southridge Grad 2010

The Osoyoos soccer tournament has always been a highlight in the senior girls’ soccer season. It’s a fairly competitive tournament at the senior level and before my grade eleven year; no Southridge team had ever won it. The bus ride up to Osoyoos is usually about six hours long and every year we spend the ride up watching soccer movies. This specific year we watched a British movie called Jimmy Grimble about an unfortunate boy who loves soccer but is terrible at the sport. With the help of some magical cleats, the protagonist Jimmy begins to play amazingly, and one of the highlights is Jimmy kicking the ball at his team members’ face and scoring off of it. Brynne also happened to have an exchange student from Scotland by the name of Fiona who came on the trip with us that year.

In grade ten, the provincial single a girl’s soccer tournament was being held in Whistler.  After finishing our first day of play, and winning all of our games, we were lethargic in a way one gets after exerting themselves and having a good time.  We headed back to the room with spare time and suggestions to find our own dinner.

The Southridge field hockey team is a work in progress.  Every year girls who have never played the sport join the team. This is not a bad thing at all and the season always ends up being a blast, but for many years we were not competitive.  Last year, my sister Andrea was the captain of the field hockey team with super goalie Syd and our professional coach Leila.  That season went well.  We won every league game, the Fraser Valley banner, and came 6^th at the Provincials, a new high for Southridge in field hockey.  This was our “dream team” and a lot of people thought that once Andrea and Syd graduated the team would just fall apart. Even I believed that.

Down the bumpy road we go, up and down, side to side, down and up again. It was pitch black and we were 4 hours late going down a road with pot-holes as deep and wide as basketballs. This was during spring break of March 2009, a group of us went to Emori Joi Primary School in Kenya to build teacher accommodations. That trip was the highlight of my Southridge career; it started with an 8 hour layover in London, Heathrow then onto Kenya, Nairobi.