We lost.

It was ours to lose, I was told, and we lost.

This is the Yukon Selects soccer club, who traveled to play in the Honda North and BC Indoor Soccer League 25th Annual Indoor Soccer Tournament held at the Northern Sport Centre in Prince George, B.C., last weekend.

Two Yukon teams entered the tournament.

Yukon Selects Orange, a mix of Yukoners playing Outside and some in Whitehorse, failed to get out of their group and into the quarter-finals after losing in a shootout. Orange's schedule seemed oddly demanding: they played three games Saturday, the last two back to back.

The Yukon Selects White has been training since November, under the tutelage of head coach Victor Lavanderos, and has ambitions to compete in larger tournaments with available players from Orange.

White's schedule was more forgiving: we played two weak teams, one Friday night and one Saturday evening, and played our quarter-final match Sunday morning.

The majority of players on both Yukon sides drove 20 hours to play three hours of soccer.

"Please don't put it that way,” a teammate said to me during our drive back to Whitehorse Sunday.

White beat Prince George United FC 2-1 Friday night and Smithers 3-1 Saturday.

Donnie Richardson scored the Yukon's opening goal in the first match and was followed by Jake Hanson's confident strike from an odd angle. In the second game Yukoner Nick Locke struck two similar goals – taking the ball outside and cracking a shot across the keeper to the bottom corner – and Matt Larsen tucked in the other goal after a give and go with teammate Lars Jessup.

Meanwhile, Orange lost their opening match to The Commodore 3-0 Saturday morning before beating Michaels Jewelers 3-0 and losing to Falcon's FC in penalties.

The highlight of Orange's run came off a perfectly weighted cross off the boot of captain Marshall Ewing onto a streaking Tyler Pumphrey's head and into the top corner in their second game. Keeper George Maratos also picked up his game in net to rally Orange with key stops in all three games.

White kicked off against Mr. Jakes Steakhouse in the quarter-final Sunday morning.

I was less concerned with knowing about the schedule and the teams than hitting all the targets, moving and still, and running into open areas to collect the ball. Sometimes these things work out and you feel pretty good about them even if you lose, but sometimes you hold the ball too long or release it too quickly or are too hesitant to go to the areas to collect the ball.

But I was told that the Yukon Selects lost in last year's finals to Mr. Jakes.

This time around the game began evenly enough, though Mr. Jakes' players were strong on the counter attack and had players cutting through the midfield for shots, albeit squandered shots in their first few attempts.

Mr. Jakes scored the game's only goal off a free kick that came after a foul about 10 yards from goal.

By the time the Yukon started looking comfortable with the ball Mr. Jakes had settled into playing stingy defensively, dropping all five players into their own end to block shots, and forcing the Yukon to play long balls up the middle to beat them to the punch.

That plan failed and the game was over.

Defender Dillon Vickerman, who represented the Yukon at the 2009 Canada Games in Prince Edward Island, was nearly unbeatable in three games.

He was good to play with because you could anticipate him stepping in front of his mark and snatching the ball before hitting a low, simple pass to your feet.

Offensively, Locke had a big second game with his two goals and was a handful for his markers most of the weekend.

Despite their better efforts, however, the loss and the prospect of driving 20 hours over night back to Whitehorse was pretty gutting.

In the locker room following Sunday's loss I felt disillusioned and somehow even insulted, as though I had been slapped across the face with a leather glove.

Both feelings are of course natural after a loss and foolish as part of a program that began in earnest in November and will continue through the summer and maybe beyond.

All the same, it's a hell of a long way to go to lose.