Z

oe Walter might have been getting in over her head when she agreed to play goal for the Pacific Coast Soccer League’s Kelowna United reserves, but it hasn’t shown so far.

Walter, 16, has been playing with women — some of them are 10 years older than her — for much of the PCSL season. She and United are to end the regular season today and Sunday down on the coast.

And although United is 4-7-4 and will miss the playoffs, Walter’s play has been a highlight for the team. That’s especially impressive considering she’s a 16-year-old girl playing every minute in goal in an under-21 league that allows each team three over-21 players.

“The biggest difference I noticed was their experience level,” says Walter. “There was one girl (on the Fraser Valley Action) who was 27 — she’s already graduated from university . . . you just notice the experience level with them and how they can do all these amazing things.”

And while it did get intimidating, Walter has stood tall in the Kelowna United goal. Her coach with United, Jan Prochazka, was singing her praises.

“From a coach’s perspective it is a delight, when you see a player who listens and performs what is being told and Zoe is very good at understanding directives and works hard to always improve herself,” Prochazka wrote in an email. “The longer the season has (gone), the better Zoe has played and the last couple of games she has been the difference between winning and dropping points.”

It was pure luck that Walter ended up in Kelowna.

She was playing for the Kamloops Blaze in 2009, when Steve Berg, coach of the Thompson-Okanagan Whitecaps Y League team called Kamloops and inquired about her. Turns out his team needed a goalie after its ’keeper came down with appendicitis.

“The coach (Berg) remembered me from a game we played against them two years before that,” Walter explains. “He thought that I was good, so he called Kamloops looking for a red-headed doctor, my mom, who had a daughter who played soccer and tried to find me.”

She finished the season in the Y League, and was asked to try out for the PCSL team this year.

“I was going to try out for the Y League team again, I was eligible because of my age,” she says. “They asked me to try out for the U21 and I made it — I was really surprised.”

She didn’t play any rep soccer this year, but she did managed to suit up for the Sa-Hali Sabres senior girls, who finished ninth in the province.

“That was fun. It was soccer seven days a week . . . I was playing a lot,” she says.

While it was tough for Walter to spurn the Kamloops Youth Soccer Association, which she says “has been really good to me,” she wanted to play at the highest level she could. But it became difficult to commute to Kelowna three times a week.

She’s looking to stay closer to Kamloops next year, but it appears that she won’t be able to play with KYSA.

“I’ve given up my youth status to play U21, so technically I’m a senior player,” she explains. “There’s a huge complicated thing that goes on, I don’t know too much about it, but apparently I’m a senior. I could play for the (PCSL’s Kamloops Heat), so I would be interested in trying out for that.”

But she has no regrets about her time in Kelowna. In the end, it will make her a better player, and hopefully help in her quest to play post-secondary soccer in Canada or the U.S.

“It was good — while you’re playing a higher level of competition, you’re also playing with a higher level of coaching,” she says. “It’s really good.”

mhunter@kamloopsnews.ca