By Dan Plouffe
There have been moments this season when University of Ottawa Gee-Gees goalkeeper Laura Salgado has needed to double-check that she was in fact guarding the right net for her summertime club, the West Ottawa Warriors.
“Most of my defenders are actually from Carleton,” explains Salgado, who has doubly confounded local rivalries by going from her last youth club at Ottawa South United to now join West Ottawa’s new Quebec LS Pro team.
But like cats and dogs, and brothers and sisters, Salgado has found out it’s indeed another myth that Ravens and Gee-Gees must hate each other at all times, and she’s discovered that they can actually be pretty productive when they work together – her Warriors’ first-place standing offering the proof.
“We joke about [the rivalry], but we get along fantastically,” admits the Holy Trinity Catholic High School grad who’s headed into her third year at uOttawa. “Of course, when we get into our school season, it’s going to be a little different.
“But since we’re playing on the team now all together, like, the chemistry is there. We have the same goal. We want we want to win. We want the best for each other. So we’re gonna put that rivalry aside for a little second in the summer, and then get back to that later in August.”
Ravens defenders Sydney Lytle, Sophia Lewis and Mia Hollingsworth have provided stalwart support for Salgado, while Rosalie Côté gives her one familiar face from uOttawa on the Warriors’ back line.
Gracie Somers, who’s scored 12 goals in 11 games, is another Gee-Gee playing for West Ottawa, but they are vastly outnumbered by Ravens players and coaches, including Carleton men’s soccer assistants Kwame Telemaque and Lucas Blain.
“It’s been interesting to see them together when they’re used to being rivals,” Telemaque smiles. “But when you have an idea and you create a good environment, usually it works out in the end.
“And there’s no shortage of talent at all. We actually have some of our younger players pushing through, our U17s or U18s who are keeping the older ladies on their toes, so it’s kind of cool to have everyone mix together.”
The end product has proven to be a potent potion. West Ottawa has 11 wins, a loss and a tie to lead Ligue 3 by four points with three games left. The stats are particularly sparkling for the club’s goalkeepers, which, naturally, includes both a Gee-Gee and a Raven.
Salgado (who wears #99) and her partner from Carleton, Chloe Lachance-Soulard (who wears #1), have earned four clean sheets apiece for West Ottawa. They shared a ninth shutout in the team’s 13 games, never conceding more than one goal in the other contests.
The Warriors suffered their first loss of the season 1-0 on Saturday in Sherbrooke, but their bulletproof record remains intact in Ottawa, where they’ve yet to allow a goal.
“I think it helps having your home support and having our young Warriors come out and support the older Warriors,” Telemaque indicates. “It’s great to have that environment, and everybody’s really taking pride in having an LS Pro franchise again.”
Salgado was very pleased to see West Ottawa rejoin a semi-pro league for the first time since 2017, when Vanessa Gilles wore Warriors red before embarking on her pro career and becoming an Olympic champion with Team Canada.
“To have it back is fantastic. It’s more opportunities to have everyone out and competing at a high level. The support has been great from the club and from the coaches,” signals Salgado, who led the Ontario Player Development League in shutouts in 2021. “Knowing the history, we have a little bit of pressure to kind of live up to that, but what a blessing it is to have that pressure, right? I think it’s definitely another motivator for us.”
The Warriors haven’t looked like raw rookies at all, outscoring their opponents by a combined 54 goals, or more than four per game. Seema Sakran, a Queen’s University Gaels product, is responsible for 15 of those and leads the league in scoring just ahead of Somers.
Yes, the Warriors’ dominance has come in the LS Pro women’s third division since they had to start at the lowest rung of the ladder, but they are also unbeaten in Cup play, which includes all three tiers. West Ottawa had scoreless draws with two first-division sides, Lakeshore and OSU, and beat second-division club AS Gatineau 2-1.
Their best test yet is coming up in the first Cup knockout game when they’ll take on the top team in Ligue 1, AS Blainville. It’s the type of challenge Salgado was craving to get from playing LS Pro as she seeks to get sharp for her university season, and build towards bigger future goals.
“I have my technical things that I want to improve on and stuff like that, but the big goal is always to go pro, right?” says Salgado, whose teammate Sakran has inked her first professional contract to play for Portuguese third-division club Real Sport in Lisbon for next season.
“I want to go as far as I can this season in the league, and I want to be able to make my teammates proud, and my coaches proud, my mentors, my parents, and I want to inspire the next generation,” adds Salgado, who loves connecting with younger players after their games. “It’s beautiful to see the newer generation coming to cheer us on, and I love having them out just to show them that there’s somewhere higher for them to go with soccer afterwards.”
West Ottawa & OSU men competing for top of the table
Ottawa teams are in strong positions overall across all LS PRO divisions.
Despite the departure of Ottawa South United’s LS Pro program director Vlad Vrsecky to coach for Czech First League club FC Viktoria Plzen in his native Czechia, the OSU Force are still contending for top spot in the men’s league and a berth in the Canadian Championship.
With 10 wins, five losses and a tie, the Force are just one point back of CS St-Laurent with six games left on their schedule. Abdulazeez Hammood Lazam is dominating the scoring race by half-a-dozen goals with 14 scored in 14 games played.
The West Ottawa men are in line for promotion as they lead the Ligue 3 central division by five points and sit second overall in their 25-team league. The Warriors lost for just the second time this year in a 1-0 road defeat to the Montreal NDG-CDN club they trounced 10-0 in their season opener.
The Warriors men got up for an earlier big match when they earned a draw against OSU to help them qualify for the knockout stages of Cup play where they’ll face another vaunted opponent in Ligue 1’s fourth-place squad, AS Blainville, just like the West Ottawa women.
The OSU Force are .500 in women’s Ligue 1, one game over .500 in U19 men’s and four games under in U21 women’s.
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