Two tournaments and a practice session in Alberta should answer a lot of questions for the Yukon's Canada Summer Games girls' soccer team.

The U-18 squad is set to play eight games in 10 days, starting this weekend in Calgary with a tier one girls' tournament.

From there the group will have a team building white water rafting outing Monday, before starting a training session in Edmonton with local soccer coach Leo McAndry on Tuesday.

The girls finish their Alberta tour with the Sherwood Park District Soccer Association 2009 Challenge Cup, which runs from July 31 to Aug. 3.

The last time the U-18 Yukon girls team attended a tournament in Alberta was back in February, which was highlighted by winning gold in one division.

"Looking at the teams I have no idea what we are up against, but we had success last time, so we do have expectations," said head coach John MacPhail. "We don't want to just go and play, we want to see if we can win. We kind of got past the days of just going to these tournaments just to play and we are hoping to compete and beat some of these teams."

There's 17 girls on the 2009 Canada Summer Games team. All of the girls are from Whitehorse and are either in Grade 10, 11 or 12.

This is a younger team with the majority of its players fitting into the U-17 and U-16.

Selection for the group began July 2008 with an ID camp. Twenty-four girls were chosen over last summer to train over the winter, but by the end of March the team was cut down to 17.

Since then, the squad has been practising three times a week and doing physical condition training.

The team is a mixture of Yukon rep squads the Wildfire and Blazers and players were chosen from both teams, MacPhail said.

The Canada Summer Games girls have been playing a Yukon select women's team this summer, made up of a variety of players.

He said his team is strong on the back-line.

"That's where we like to build because we play Ontario and Saskatchewan in our pool at the Canada Games, so we will look to defend first and see if we can get breaks from that," MacPhail said.

With the Canada Summer Games scheduled for the final two weeks of August, the timing of the two Alberta tournaments was just right, he said, adding the games should help define some of the roles on the team.

"That's what this week is for with these eight games we can sort of define who is going to play where and how we want to do things," he said. "We have a pretty good idea already, but it's just a great opportunity to get a lot of soccer games before we go off to the Canada Games."

The Yukon girls will play three games in Calgary before being seeded, while the Sherwood Park tournament uses a round robin format.