Eight-year-old Harriet Murphy limbers up for the competition.
BALLARAT Grammar’s sporting fields will be awash with pink this weekend, and you know what that means. The Total Girl Soccer Tournament is in town.
About 900 girls will flock to Ballarat for the ninth running of the competition, which is held today and tomorrow.
The seven-a-side round robin format caters for every age group from under-10s to under-16s.
Administrator and co-creator of the tournament Laurelle Sommers said numbers were slightly down for this year’s renewal, but the event still remained the largest all-girls soccer tournament in the Southern Hemisphere.
“It’s a little bit smaller than previous years because I think people are finding financially that it is tougher to come up and stay, but it’s going to be good,” Sommers said.
“We peaked two years ago with 1150 girls, but there has been a bit of a decline. There’s a movement by Football Federation Victoria to go into elite pathways rather than community soccer so I think that is having an impact. There is state trials this weekend and that has also impacted on what we are doing.
“But we’re still rapt. I’ve got that many positive comments from coaches of kids that are too old and would love to come back again.”
A total of 12 pitches will be used across the two Ballarat Grammar grounds.
Matches will be played in half-hour blocks, kicking off from 9am this morning, with the same schedule tomorrow.