Posted: 11th August 2023
Posted in: School News
Our girls have featured in the local newspaper for their incredible achievement in the Victorian Churches Football Association competition. The full article is available here.
An extract is below.
Look out Sam Kerr…the girls from Harkaway Hills College are scoring goals at a rapid rate – both on and off the pitch – in their first season in the Victorian Churches Football Association (VCFA).
Falcons FC, as they are known, have scored 79 goals in just 14 matches and sit proudly on top of the VCFA Under-14 Girls competition with just four rounds remaining in the season.
That’s a remarkable set of numbers by anyone’s standards, but when you consider these girls had never played soccer before until last year – then a championship win would be even more remarkable.
The story began when the developing school from Narre Warren North decided to enter a team in interschool sports last year.
Fuelled by the upcoming FIFA Women’s World Cup, the girls aged between nine and 13 were being taught by a teacher, who fell sick…so reinforcements were called in.
Jaime Castro, a former professional player in El Salvador, whose daughter Sabrina plays in the team, was called into action.
“The girls had never played soccer or team sports, and there are not many girls at the school to start with, but you could see they were all eager and wanted to have a go,” Castro said.
“We lost the tournament, but I could see potential, and started talking to the principal about running some training sessions and possibly getting a team together for this year.
“Some trialled, some left, some got injured, but at the end we got girls from grade four to grade eight and that’s how things got started.”