Either Vancouer No. 4 or No. 6 will be crowned the best senior boys soccer team in the city. Three points separated the top four teams in the senior boys soccer league, and the tables were so tight this fall, all but one of those teams has been knocked out of the playoffs.
Coaches say they can鈥檛 remember a season with a tighter field.
鈥淩eally, any of the five teams that go through to the next phase of the Lower Mainland championships could beat one another on a given day,鈥� said Andy Johnston, the head coach of the Lord Byng Grey Ghosts who finished sixth and advanced to compete in the final at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday at Magee secondary.
Kitsilano and Point Grey tied for first with parallel 4-1-1 records and 13 points apiece. In their one meeting, there was no score after 90 minutes and a shootout gave Point Grey the win, which had repercussions at the end of the season and put the Grey Hounds into top place heading into the playoffs.
Hamber (4-2) followed with 12 points and Churchill (3-2-1) was next with 10 points. Lord Byng鈥檚 losing record of 1-4-1 and four points didn鈥檛 stop the upstart from surging ahead.
Churchill鈥檚 route though the playoffs started against Van Tech (1-4-1) and the Bulldogs won 2-0. They advanced to the semi-finals against Kitsilano and the game was scoreless after regulation time. Churchill won in a shootout, knocking the 2012 defending city championship from the final.
In the post-season, Lord Byng defeated Eric Hamber 4-1 Oct. 15 then two days later upset No. 1 Point Grey 1-0 on the Grey Hounds鈥� own turf.
The Hamber Griffins were justifiably highly ranked, said Byng鈥檚 Johnston. 鈥淗amber had outplayed us, defeating us 2-0 during league play. In the playoff game at their park, again they looked the better team in the early going but we scored and suddenly we took back a lot of the play.鈥�
In an email to the Courier, Johnston outlined the four key factors for Byng鈥檚 late-season surge. This timely聽 鈥渟occer renaissance鈥� comes from dedication to team play and 鈥渁 commitment to play at the level that we know we can play at having been at the B.C. Championships last year.鈥�
The return of Ben Houtman was also fine timing as well as tightening up the back end while managing to score goals at the offensive end.
鈥淒espite having some talented returning Grade 11s from last year, we struggled to score goals which I thought would be one of our strengths this year as last year's graduating players were my stronger defensive players. However, we only scored four goals in six regular season games and three of those were against Churchill,鈥� said Johnston.鈥�
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