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Soggy soccer loss at Arrowview

OYSS Stingers still had fun playing hard against Nanaimo in the mud bowl
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Oceanside’s Chelsea Harvey pushes the ball up field in the pouring rain Saturday with teammates Olivia Williams and Olivia Earl on her wing.

It was tough slogging for local soccer players on Saturday as some teams took to the fields in cold pouring rain.

In action on the pitch at Arrowview Elementary School, the Oceanside Youth Soccer Society (OYSS) Stingers showed no quit but came up on the short end of an exciting 3-1 final against Nanaimo.

“They were playing in a mud bowl — it was awful,” Oceanside head coach John Williams said after the game, adding “the girls had fun, but it was sure rainy. “They played really well today,” he said. “They worked real hard in terrible conditions. (There were) lots of spills.”

Olivia Williams scored the Stingers’ lone goal in the second half and keeper Joanna Waite came up with back-to-back big saves.

The Stingers travel to Ladysmith next Saturday to take on the 49ers.

In other soccer news the OYSS held its annual year-end Pony wrap-up tournament for the 120 or so kids in U6-U8 at Parksville Community Park that day. OYSS’ Mike Cochrane said they thought about cancelling it, “but we decided to go ahead with it.

“It was great — pretty well everybody had their full teams,” said Cochrane, who has been volunteering with OYSS for 22 years. “We were under the picnic shelter (after the games were over) handing out pizzas and medallions. The kids were soaked, but they were smiling. It was definitely a bad day — it was heavy, heavy rain — and if it was a regular game we would have cancelled it.”

Cochrane also had props for Save On Foods “for donating the juice boxes and granola bars.”