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Women’s soccer in Regina is about to get kicked up a notch, with the first United Women’s Soccer league game coming up for the city’s QC United pro-am women’s team.
The team just launched this year, joining the UWS loop. The league stretches across the U.S. and Canada, with just one other Canadian team in Calgary.
“We’re ecstatic. This is something we’ve worked on for years to continue to build the organization and to get to this point,” said Hugh Dooley, the director of operations and head coach for QC United.
Dooley said he started with the club 10 years ago, and club officials had been thinking about something like this even then.
The league is made up of university players, aspiring and former professionals and international stars. The vast majority of the players on Regina’s team are from universities; many are from Regina and Saskatoon, but some are from as far away as New Brunswick.
Claire Abrey is from Saskatoon, but is on a soccer scholarship to the University of Memphis in Tennessee. She’s excited for this team as it fills an important gap for her in the summer.
“A lot of my teammates on my university team have highly competitive teams to play with in the summer, and I was thinking earlier in the year, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do for the summer, I might have to go away somewhere to train,’ ” she said. “I was really excited when I heard Regina was getting a team.”
She said she’s all right with being a role model for younger girls in the game.
“I had a lot of older players that I looked up to when I was younger, and I think that helped me just with pushing towards my goals and having something to strive for, so I’m happy if I can do that for others too,” Abrey said.
Abrey is playing on the team with Taylor Bubnick, who’s from Saskatoon but plays for the University of Regina Cougars.
Bubnick started playing soccer when she was four and she turns 21 this summer. She said she never thought she’d get an opportunity like this.
“Growing up, it was quite the gap between university to playing pro somewhere, and this is an incredible opportunity for the province, for local girls to kind of bridge that gap and get people aspiring and dreaming a little bit more than they were before,” said Bubnick.
There’s going to be some stiff competition for these women. The UWS’s West Conference is known as the “group of death,” with teams from Regina, Calgary, L.A., Santa Clarita, and Colorado.
QC United will have four away games and four home games. The first home game is set for Sunday against the defending West Conference-champion Calgary Foothills WFC. Game time at Regina Rugby Park is 1 p.m.