Brent Mutis
CapU Blues sports info
There would be lots of reasons to take the offseason as just that: off the pitch and off competition.
But that’s just not the way Capilano Blues standouts Maya Smith and Lauren Grey want to spend their time in the months away from PACWEST soccer.
Both are playing in BC League 1, a FIFA-sanctioned pro-am (semiprofessional) soccer league in its fourth season of existence. Governed by Canada Soccer and BC Soccer, the league exists to offer high-performance players, from post-secondary age to recently graduated university players, a chance to showcase their skills against other elite players.
Playing on different sides this season, Smith and Grey have both donned red kits – Smith with TSS Rovers and Grey with Nanaimo FC.
For Smith, who just graduated from the Blues program and completed a kinesiology degree, the chance to keep competing at a high level was the main draw while Grey is using the experience to work back from injury after missing the 2024 PACWEST season recovering from a knee issue.
“Playing soccer is a really important part of my life,” says Smith, a Port Coquitlam native. “I’ve always been a competitive athlete and wanted to continue to play at the highest level I can.”
“The return has been amazing,” says Grey. “It took a little bit to get going but I have been able to play full games… the word I would use is relief; I’m just so excited to be out there.”
The excitement was heightened on May 17 as Smith and Grey went head to head in a TSS-Nanaimo match that ended in a 2-2 draw. The Blues teammates ended up seeing plenty of each other on the pitch with Grey in centre-back fending off Smith from her striker position.
“She’s (Smith) such a shifty player,” says Grey, who hails from North Vancouver. “She’s hard to mark, especially when I’m the last person at the back. It [brought] me back to the youth days when we used to play against each other.”
“She (Grey) is such a strong defender for us at Cap and has a lot of soccer IQ when it comes to decision making and distributing the ball from the back line,” says Smith. “She has the mindset to always look to play forward which I think is so important. I definitely wish I would’ve gotten another season with her and hope to play with her again soon.”
TSS and Nanaimo remain in the battle for playoff position in the nine-team league with Smith’s team carrying a 3-3-1 mark (fourth) and Grey’s side sitting at 2-3-2 (seventh). The latter’s return to playing has come with the added wrinkle of playing in Nanaimo, where a great deal of the team is made up of players from the Blues’ PACWEST rival Vancouver Island University (VIU) and the team is coached by VIU’s Bobbie Taylor.
“If you told me in January that they (VIU players) would become my close friends, I would probably laugh at you,” says Grey. “… I have been talking to (VIU striker) Jade Dillabough and we have been laughing that were going to be each other’s checks in just a couple months.”
That would be the 2025 PACWEST season, where VIU will come in as the defending champs and Grey will be back in Blues colours for the first time since October of 2023. Unfortunately for Capilano, they won’t have the services of Smith, whose last game ended up being the bronze-medal match at the CCAA National Championship where the Blues, the host side for the tournament in Squamish, knocked off VIU to claim a podium finish.
“I’m extremely proud of where the team finished,” says Smith of the 2024 Blues campaign. “We showed up when it counted and that’s what matters at the end of the day. I’m happy with where I finished at Cap and am excited to push further in the sport and see what my future holds.”
While Smith continues on the League 1 path with TSS, the Blues will focus on the PACWEST season ahead and Grey will be counted on as a leader on the back line, maybe also sharing what she learns about the VIU approach from her Nanaimo-based League 1 teammates.
