TRU women's soccer head coach Mark Pennington is entering his second season with the WolfPack (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

TRU WOMEN'S SOCCER

TRU WolfPack women using off year to grow as a young team

Sep 2, 2020 | 2:00 PM

KAMLOOPS — The TRU women are seeing the cancelled season as a growth opportunity. It’s still a young program. With nine new recruits coming in, it’s a chance for the rookies to get used to head coach Mark Pennington and his program.

“We’ve talked a lot as a team that this year is super fortunate almost in the sense we are a super young team and we don’t have a ton of older, returning players, so it’s nice to finally actually get a year where we can really get some good training under our belt,” said third-year centre midfielder Ainsley Grether, who attended Norkam Secondary.

Rookie defender Raiya Rumo, coming from Ontario, added “I think there’s a huge advantage. I get to know the team more and know their style of play before I go into game situations and I may feel uncomfortable, or just because I don’t have the chemistry with them.”

“Any new recruit that comes into the program, it takes them a bit of time to get engrained into our culture and who we are and what our core values are and become part of the team,” said Pennington.

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Pennington enters year two as head coach, coming off his first real recruiting season. The WolfPack finished second-last in the Canada West standings at 2-8-4. This off year will give Pennington a chance to implement his system even further.

“We have talked about our focus for this whole development season is really just finding a style of our attack,” said Grether. “For anyone in Kamloops who watched us last year, it was an absolute grueller. We focus on defense a lot. This year, I think we’re going to definitely find pattern with our offense and figure out some key players for that and start building for our next season.”

The players are training in two separate groups to ensure that if a player contracts COVID-19 in one group, the group can keep practice. The WolfPack are also trying to start exhibition games. They’re waiting for the green light from BC Soccer to bump up into Phase 3, where they can play competitive games.

“They’ve said we’re allowed to play in some smaller cohorts. We’re only allowed to play a small number of teams, probably regionally, so I’ve already been in touch with a couple of locals — UBCO being one of them — and hoping that once we get the all-clear and we get the all-clear from the university and the facilities that we can start play. We’ll be looking to play some games as soon as possible.”

As great as it’s been to get back on the pitch for these girls, they want to be playing for real. But the approach to the exhibition games will be much different.

“The thing when you’re preparing for a season, you’re preparing to play some very specific teams, so from a tactical approach, looking at how they play and then preparing specifically to play against those individual teams,” noted Pennington. “We’re not in that situation obviously because we’re not in an actual season, so an opportunity now to focus on ourselves a little bit and really change the way that we play. Hoping in 12 months time we’re in a different position when it comes to the actual season.”