Club Focus - BIFC GU9s - 'The Red Pandas'

By Andy Gillooley - BIFC Red Pandas Coach

When Penny, my daughter started to lose interest in going to soccer practices I knew I had to act quickly to make sure that her journey with the sport didn't end before it even had chance to start, so I chatted to her about what it was that wasn't exciting her about playing.

What she said made a lot of sense, the coed nature of the group, which was predominantly made up of boys meant that she craved playing with more female players, were she'd have the opportunity to develop at her own pace surrounded by her friends. She also didn't feel ready to make the move to playing teams from the mainland, and somewhat selfishly with her younger brother also taking up a lot of our weekends, I wasn't ready to spend so much time dedicated to soccer either.

The solution appeared to be to set up a new program for her age group which would be tailored to young girls on Bowen Island, who wanted to explore playing and develop their skills, but in a fun and light hearted environment. In Fall 2024 The U8 Girls Development program was born! Now we just needed some players!

This was actually easier than expected, all of the girls from the Coed group moved straight across, and then somewhat unexpectedly some of their friends who'd never played, or really shown an interest before joined. Ryan Glancy and Vincent Berube Dufour joined our coaching team and before long we had the girls excited to attend practice every Saturday, regularly hearing that it was one of the highlights of their weekends. Even better was that we started to empower the girls to create a team in their own image, one of the first things we needed was a name, they came up with the brilliantly apt Bowen Island FC Red Pandas, which has gone on to be a more perfect nickname than we ever could have imagined.

Fall practice moved into Spring, and we started to pick up some younger players that moved up an age group to be able to play for the Red Pandas, the big question as we moved through towards summer though, was what would the team look like in Fall? Would the girls want to step up and start playing against girls from off Island, and would their parents be supportive? Again, things couldn't have gone much better, we found that the girls had a resounding desire to test themselves against other teams and enough sign ups to join the local NSYSA LEAGUE.

One hurdle we faced was that Vincent and his daughter Samuelle left to travel the world (we miss you), and Ryan's daughter Fianna left to focus on gymnastics (you'll always be Red Pandas) but into their place stepped Connor Lowe and Jamie Nesbit as coaches and Kristina Michaux as manager. Before we knew it we were alternating between welcoming teams to Bowen or travelling off Island for games across the North Shore. It has been a steep learning curve, for both the girls and the coaching team, but we're seeing week on week improvements, and having such a fun time that it is all worthwhile.

Seeing the team bond and put so much effort into improving together has ben incredible, and it's crazy to think about the potential each of the girls have, and how much of a benefit soccer will be to their future growth. I'm truly thankful to Niul, Anita and everybody at Bowen Island Football Club for making it possible to bring the team together and to have created an environment that focuses on all of the best things about soccer, the fun, the excitement and the togetherness. I can't wait to continue this journey. Let's go Pandas, Let's go!