CCH Invitational a success

By Lethbridge Herald on June 5, 2024.

CCH SOCCER PHOTO CCH soccer players gather around the bins of food collected at the inaugural Invitational tournament.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

The inaugural Catholic Central High School Invitational  soccer tournament is in the books and was a roaring success.

Teams from CCH, Chinook, Winston Churchill, Immanuel Christian Secondary School and École La Vérendrye School  participated in the tournament on May 31-June 1.

“The feedback that we’ve had is some of the kids actually for the first time have felt included not only within their school community but also as a community as a whole,” said Mallory Kristjanson, invitational organizer and CCH staff soccer coach.

“One of the greatest highlights was our francophone school(École La Vérendrye) that came in and they said for once they feel a part of the big school community of Lethbridge and that’s why we do this. We wanted every single student to come out and feel supported (and) also included.”

The Invitational also felt supported from the Lethbridge Soccer Association  with their guidance the referees and the broader community.

“The feedback we’ve heard from parents, from community, from students has been you need to keep this up and we plan to,” said Kristjanson.

“This was such a diverse experience with players coming that are new to Canada, who were able to come and play soccer with various other teams ,various other schools and it was just from even the coach’s perspective an unbelievable experience.”

École La Vérendrye went undefeated in the invitational.

“They were such an amazing team,” said Kristjanson.

“These kids came and played their hearts out; you could tell with the excitement.  And when you watch teams that are from a very small school population  coming and playing with very large high schools like CCH and Chinook, these kids dominated, and they  played with their hearts and played as a team.”

The  invitational had food drive for the Inter Faith Food Bank that generated 302 pounds of food that had an associated retail value of $1,063.04.

“Our students felt that it was really  important that we were able to help support any of our students and students throughout the community of Lethbridge who maybe accessing the food bank,” said Kristjanson.

The invitational collaborated with Shoes for Kids YQL to provide a new pair of runners to those students that needed them to participate in the tournament.

The hope is to make the invitational an annual event and bring in more teams from the surrounding area.