This past weekend, the soccer communities in Juneau and Whitehorse continued what has developed into a special relationship.

Both cities hosted the annual Juneau Exchange Tournament, with three Yukon girls' teams travelling to Juneau, while the boys hosted U-12, U-13, U-14, U-15, U-16 and U-17 Alaskan squads.

This year's Whitehorse side was a little different than in previous years, featuring an exhibition format as opposed to divisions.

No awards were given out and the focus was devoted to a variety of games mostly pitting the Whitehorse teams against Juneau's squads.

The reason for the change was a result of organizers finding it was difficult, in some cases, to make fair divisions. As a result of some teams in previous years ending up too strong or too weak, they decided to just try an exhibition format this year.

Most of the teams played four games over the weekend.

Whitehorse had U-12, U-14, U-16 and U-18 teams.

"It's really helpful for our teams because it certainly aides in our development that we are able to get some competition," said U-18 Juneau exchange coach and Whitehorse's tournament co-ordinator Jake Hanson. "We don't see a lot of competition otherwise unless we travel outside, so them sending us teams that match up nicely with the ages of our teams is great."

Hanson said he was impressed with how Juneau's teams did at the exchange competition.

"They are really developing quite technical players and in a town of a similar size to ours, and has similar soccer needs and opportunities," he said. "I think we are actually quite good competition for one another, so it works out quite nicely."

Hanson added one of the pleasant surprises was how well Whitehorse's U-12 boys did.

"They are a brand new program, so they haven't seen any competition as a team," he said.

"They mostly have been training and have had the odd exhibition game. Juneau, I thought, had quite a good U-12 team and quite co-ordinated and quite technical players. They had a little bit of a short bench, but I thought our boys did very well to win those games."

Carl Ferlauto, the coach of the Juneau U-13 Cosmos, said it is always nice to come up to Whitehorse for the exchange.

"It's stiff competition for us and we like it," he said. "You can see the hockey influence, the Whitehorse teams were pretty strong physically, which was good for us."

Jericho Cristobal, an Alaska player at the Juneau Exchange Tournament, said it went great this year.

"I think we lost two and won two games, so that's not that bad."