Ottawa Fury News Release - www.ottawafury.com
Friday, April 11, 2008
OTTAWA, ON -- The Ottawa Fury are delighted to announce that 18 year old W-League striker Alex Valerio has accepted an invitation to travel to Portugal to try out for the Portuguese National Team which will compete in the 2008 UEFA European U-20 Women’s Championship.
Valerio is a former student at St Mark High School in Manotick, Ontario. She is just completing her freshman year at Princeton University where she is studying Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Valerio will travel to Portugal this weekend for the camp which will be held at the National Team Training Centre at Rio Maior, 100 kms north of Lisbon. At the conclusion of the camp, a squad will be chosen to represent Portugal in qualifying games against Italy, Norway, and the Ukraine in late April. The finals of the event will take place in France from the 7-19 of July.
"I’m incredibly excited to have been invited to try out. To have the opportunity to play for a national team is a privilege which very few players ever get. Regardless of how everything turns out, I know it will be a memorable experience," commented Alex.
Valerio was invited to the camp after the coach, Monica Jorge, contacted Julie Shackford, the Head Coach at Princeton. Alex played in all 17 games for the Tigers this fall scoring three goals.
She played her early years of soccer with the Gloucester Hornets and Capital United before joining the Ottawa Fury program. She was a member of the U14 Girls Ontario Provincial program and captain of Team Ontario in 2003. She captained her Fury teams at the U15 through U17 age groups and was a member of the 2005 Fury team which won the Super Y-League New England Championship and went on to reach the semi-finals of the SYL North American championships, In 2006, her Fury U17 Girls team reached the North American final of the US Club Soccer National Cup.
For the past two seasons, Alex has been a member of the Ottawa Fury W-League squad. She participated in the 2006 W-League Championship Final and played in 10 games for the 2007 W-League Regular Season champion squad.
