Toronto college wins its 1st national championship in women's soccer
Members of a women's soccer team at a Toronto college are celebrating this week after they became national champions on the weekend in a hard-fought match in P.E.I.
Seneca Polytechnic is the first Ontario school to win a Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) national championship in women's soccer.
Toronto's Seneca Sting defeated Quebec City's Dynamiques de Sainte-Foy 1-0 in Summerside on Saturday. The Quebec team is from Cégep de Sainte-Foy.
Emma Gattoni scored the first and only goal of the game for Seneca Sting at the 73 minute mark. The victory is the first time that Seneca has won the CCAA women's soccer championship.
Co-captains of the team, Carley Uddenberg and Jordan Burke, said on Monday that the team has always had talent but hard work and mental toughness led the team to gold. Uddenberg has played for the team for five years while Burke has been with the team for four years.
Uddenberg said the team took the time to come together, talk about its goals and what it wanted to accomplish this year and having that mindset was crucial.
"Sport can be such a challenging thing physically but I think people forget how mentally challenging it is," she said.
"The team is so special. We've worked so hard this year. We've gone through our ups and downs, but I think just to get there and finally do it is something that not a lot of people get to experience. I'm going to be grateful for it forever. It's awesome."
Burke said the win was well-deserved because the team had "a lot of heart and a lot of drive." Staying focused got the team to the end, she added.
"It's been super frustrating. We've had pretty much a clean sheet from the beginning to the end of the regular season, but then finally when we get to provincials, nationals, we tend to fall short. That's been the case for the past few years," she said.
But the team got past that hurdle, she added.
Winning goal was 'insane moment,' co-captain says
As for the winning goal, Burke said she felt relief, joy and triumph.
"Honestly, it felt surreal. The last couple minutes of the game, I just kept looking at the clock and I was panicking. I was like: 'Are we really about to win a gold national medal?' As soon as the final whistle blew, I was just instantly in tears. I was so happy, being around my teammate and my coaches. It was an insane moment," she said.
Luca Sirianni, head coach of the women's soccer program at Seneca Polytechnic, said it's an "incredible feeling" to win the championships. He said the group is experienced and diverse and stepped up to the challenge.
"We're going to return next year hopefully and try to repeat," he said.
