Last week 15-year-old Sechelt soccer player Ella Campbell was recruited to Mountain United FC, an elite Metro Vancouver club that won the 2018 National Championships.
“I started crying,” Ella told Coast Reporter. She learned the news through a phone call from her father while she was writing a science test at Chatelech Secondary School.
Ella, who has been playing since kindergarten, started out on a rep team on the Sunshine Coast before making a competitive team in North Vancouver. A year ago, early into her tenure with the North Van team, she was scouted by Moun-tain United and asked to train with them.
Since then she has been travelling to the Lower Mainland up to five days a week to play for North Vancouver and to train with Mountain United, leaving school early to make practice on time. That heavy load will lighten now that she is committed to one team. “It feels a lot better,” Ella said. “I was really tired going to practice, it gives me more time to rest.”
That commitment signalled she was ready for elite play, said Mountain United head coach Lee Tregonning. “[She has] shown a commitment, not just by travelling from the Sunshine Coast all the way down three times a week, but also developing and being there without missing a practice, which shows a lot,” he said.
Ella said she welcomes the intensity of play as she focuses on future goals. “I want to play for Canada.”
The defence player is known for her athleticism, ability to read the game and her passing range. “She has it all,” Tregonning said.
This year the club will be aiming for a repeat of its first place finish at nationals, but Tregonning said the club doesn’t measure success by championship banners, but by recruitment. Mountain United FC is a feeder team for ambitious players looking to play at the provincial, national and post-secondary levels.
In the past year and a half, five players have moved to the Girls Elite Super REX program run by Whitecaps FC, BC Soccer and Canada Soccer, which sees players attend school and train daily at a facility in Burnaby with the goal of funnelling talent to Canada’s Women’s National Team. Two others are training with the program twice a week while staying with Mountain United. Six players are also playing in the provincial program. “Out of 18, that’s quite a lot,” Tregonning said.
While Ella has national ambitions, right now she’ll be settling into her new jersey number – 16 – and playing in front of college scouts. According to Tregonning, more than 90 per cent of its players receive post-secondary scholarships to play soccer.
Ella has soccer role models in her own family. Her older brother plays at the elite level and her father, Ken Campbell, played for Canada’s youth team in 1987.
