By David F. Rooney
Revelstoke has been the scene of a British Invasion this week. No — nothing military. Just football, pure football, as six British soccer players have taken local kids and taught them everything they know.
The Challenger British Soccer Camp has seen 70 local kids practicing for hours on end at Queen Elizabeth Park and the coaches have been impressed.
“I have to say I’m quite impressed,” said coach Ryan Clark, a sports management student from Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College in London. “We were told that soccer is as popular here as hockey and it’s true.”
This band of coaches had taught camps in the Seattle-Tacoma area, Golden, Fernie, Elkford, Princeton and now Revelstoke. Although he didn’t say so I got the impression that the kids in Revelstoke were a high point of their tour of the West.
Clark, a native of High Wycombe, said the kids are enthusiastic, attentive and learn well. When asked what the main difference is between Canadian and English children he laughed and said the local kids “are a lot nicer.”
One local boy said he was very impressed with the camp and the coaches.
“They taught us some cool moves,” he said.
The camp ends Friday and the British coaches, all of them students, will be splitting up. Most, like Clark, will be heading to school in the United Kingdom but a few plan to travel around Canada and the United for a while before flying back to Europe.
Here are a few photos from the camp.
