Futsal teams hit the floor with gold medals in mind

By Sean Rooney on January 19, 2019.

srooney@medicinehatnews.com @MHNRooney

It’s been nice enough to play soccer outdoors ever since their seasons ended, but now the Medicine Hat College Rattlers are focused firmly on the indoor season for the next couple months.

The Rattlers are in Three Hills this weekend for the first of four tournaments they’ll play this semester, including one on home court March 1-3 and the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference finals in Lethbridge March 15-17.

“We’re really excited, we have a good group of guys coming back from outdoor,” said third-year keeper Devin Simon last week. “Outdoor didn’t end the way we wanted but it’s kind of redemption for us going into futsal, to come away with a trophy at the end of it is a real possibility for us.”

Both men’s and women’s squads have come through in a big way in the indoor season since the sport was introduced to the ACAC back in 2012. The men were third last year and have a gold, a silver and three bronze to their credit. The women can rightly claim to be a dynasty in the conference with five straight championships and silver medals the other two years there was a final.

After barely having enough players to field an outdoor women’s team last semester, however, there’s not the same pressure to repeat for a sixth time.

“I definitely felt the pressure last year playing that was our fifth year winning it, then coming in this year we have a completely different team, a bunch of fresh new faces so we’re learning it, we’ll see where it takes us,” said fourth-year defender Emily Weimer. “In the past they do know we’ve won five years in a row, so they’re excited to play us, especially SAIT coming in for their first year. We’ll see what happens.”

Indeed, the Trojans — whose teams both went 12-0 in the regular season outdoors before being upset at conference finals — will add an interesting wrinkle. There are only nine schools who field teams in futsal, and the short season means a lot can change in a hurry in the standings.

Weimer isn’t sure what to make of what’s to come, since she’s in her last year with the Rattlers.

“It’s definitely a sad time because you always have 12 people on the court that you can call your friends, see them around school and stuff,” said the education major. “Now it’s going to be different, going into a school, working with so many different teachers I don’t know and I don’t have soccer to fall back on at the end of the day.”

Weimer leaves as her coach, Stephen Newton, starts to build after having little time to recruit after he was hired last summer. While winning games will obviously be the focus, Newton is also busy recruiting for the next outdoor campaign. One of the teams coming for the Rattlers’ home tournament is a group of college-age women from Calgary, and it’s clear he’d love to see a couple of them inspired to return in the fall.

Men’s coach Ian Tully, also a summer 2018 hire, notes he’s down to about 12 or 14 players right now, but that’s not a problem for futsal.

“You can only have 12 on your roster anyways,” he said. “We have enough but we could do with a couple more.”

The number of players on the floor — five — isn’t the only major change from the outdoor season. Practices are only a couple times a week, and they’re at 6 a.m. instead of after classes are done for the day.

“It’s totally different, practices are a lot shorter, a lot earlier,” said Simon. “I’m not a morning person but I can tell you I’d rather have my practices over early morning fitness.”

At Three Hills, the men lost 7-0 to Olds and 5-0 King’s University Friday night, with more games set for Saturday. The women were up against Olds and Lethbridge in back-to-back games Friday but scores were not available by press time.

17
-16