In the early 90’s, women’s soccer was growing at a rapid rate in this country, and the Atlantic university scene was extremely competitive.

Within this highly competitive field was the 1994 Dalhousie women’s soccer team, coached by Neil Turnbull. Co-captained by Dana Holmes and Carla Perry, the team was composed of 11 returning players and a strong group of new recruits, together forming a 21-women roster with 17 Nova-Scotia-born players.

The team was just recovering from the disappointment of a very near championship title miss.

“The year before we got the silver medal and lost a heart-breaking loss in overtime on the 11^th penalty shot,” says Holmes.

The 1994 season started off slowly, with many tied games on the record against formidable teams such as Acadia, Memorial, and StFX.

“We went through the season neck and neck with a lot of different teams, including Acadia,” says Holmes. “We had a really challenging time with Acadia. It was always back and forth, the game was tied, or one team would win by a goal.”

Former Acadia women’s soccer coach Laura Saunders explains the rivalry between her team and Dalhousie as an important time for women’s varsity soccer in Nova Scotia:

“So we knew that the winner that would come out of this conference, represent this conference, would often have a very good chance of vying for a national title, so it was an exciting time.”

Expectations were high for the conference, and for the Dalhousie team in particular. A slow start to the season frustrated coach Turnbull—so much so, that he decided to implement an especially memorable practice drill.

“We used to do one quarter, one half, three quarters, and every girl on the team will understand what that’s all about,” says Holmes. “We would train for hours going back and forth across the field with Neil yelling/cheering at us, and we’d have to go across the field at a quarter speed, back across a half speed, back across at three quarter speed, and then all the way back at full strength. And we would do that not once or twice, but many, many times.”

“He somehow knew how to get the most out of his athletes,” says Hall of Famer and former Dalhousie Athletic Director, Karen Moore. “And it was almost like he would break them down all season, just work them hard, hard, hard—he would almost drive them crazy—and then just before playoffs he would build them back up again and ease off and give them confidence.”

“We grew closer and closer together,” adds Holmes, “and, this is going to sound terrible, but it was because we loved our coach, Neil, but we also hated him. He pushed us harder than we’d ever, ever been pushed, and at that time he was the national team coach, so he knew what it took to get to that next level.”

For this Dalhousie team, the next level meant a National title. First Dal narrowly defeated Acadia in the AUAA championship, with goalkeeper Leahanne Turner achieving a shutout for the team, and Holmes securing the win on the ninth penalty kick in the second overtime period. The Tigers then traveled to Edmonton for the CIAU conference. And, for a second straight year they faced UBC in a hotly contested final.

“It was 2-2 right up until the end,” remembers Holmes. “It was a very equally matched game, we’d go back and forth. Leahanne Turner made a number of very, very significant saves that made the difference, but we were back and forth. They would go to their end, we would go to our end; it would have been a very exciting game to watch.”

Exciting might be an understatement.  After two fifteen-minute overtime halves the score was still tied and the Tigers found themselves in a sudden death shootout. It came down to Dal’s sixth shooter. Holmes recalls the final moments:

“I just remember the excitement of watching Karen Hood kick that ball into the net. And the little girl from UBC […] hers hit the post, and you could have heard a pin drop when hers hit the post. And she dropped to her knees and we just started to scream because we knew, that was it— we’d finally won a national championship.”

“Winning a national championship is something that nobody can ever take away from you,” says Moore. “And all these years later they get together and they have that bond that when you go through a process like they went through, it holds you together forever.”

“We were on the map,” says Holmes. “Nova Scotia, this small little province with all of us little players who couldn’t seem to crack the national team at that point (and many of us had tried) it was our moment, like we proved to the rest of Canada, we’ve got soccer players in Nova Scotia.”

These soccer players included championship MVP, CIAU Tournament All-Star, CIAU First Team All-Canadian Carla Perry, and fellow CIAU All-Stars Leahanne Turner, Kate Gillespie, and Dana Holmes.

“It set the standard for the program; it was the turning point. It became then the expectation of the program,” says Saunders. “To me that 1994 championship was pivotal in Dalhousie’s dominance of women’s soccer over the course of the next probably five to ten years.”

“It doesn’t come without a fight, we worked hard to get where we were,” says Holmes.

“Our team song that was our inspiration and our motivation was a song that was really popular at that time called ‘Dreams Can Come True,’ and certainly that happened in ’94 and here it is happening again.”

The 1994 Dalhousie Tigers – the first women’s soccer team in Dalhousie history to win a CIAU Championship— has now achieved the dream of entering the Hall of Fame, and inspired generations of varsity women’s soccer players in the province to strive for the same goals.