A musical note, a dancer in full flight, thespian masks, a paint brush, and a clapperboard appear on the front wall of Kamloops School of the Arts.

There is room for a soccer ball, and a recent achievement on the pitch is augmenting the face of school identity.

“I think the coolest part is probably just seeing how the team has grown,” said Charli Wurtz, a Grade 12 student who plays goalkeeper for the KSA girls’ high school soccer squad. “We’ve gone from a really low level to a higher level and it’s just kind of cool to see the development.”

Athletics director Kirk MacFarlane was working with a blank canvas when hired in 2016, arriving on campus to discover there was no nickname for school sports teams, which is understandable considering there were no school sports teams.

KSA landed on a name — Stars — that aligns with an acronym it has adopted to support positive behaviour: Safety, Teamwork, Accountability and Respect.

And MacFarlane set out to populate the KSA sports constellation.

“I’d be coming down the hallway and I knew we had a game that night and I would be like, ‘Hey, can you play?’ MacFarlane said.

“It was literally just dragging people off the street to put them in the gym to play the games. I always tell the story that our first team we ever had was a boys’ basketball team and the first game we ever had we lost 98 to 2.”

Alexa Hunter, a Grade 12 midfielder, recalls her introduction to the soccer squad.

“I was one of the kids that got picked up from the hallway,” Hunter said. “I played soccer outside of school and [MacFarlane] was like, ‘Great, see you at practice tomorrow.’ And I was like, ‘This is horrible.’”

The school has come a long way since then, now boasting nearly 10 sports teams and several appearances at Okanagan Championships, but no KSA offering had reached a B.C. School Sports Championship tournament (provincials) prior to the 2024-2025 school year.

With a victory over Clearwater in the West Zone title tilt, KSA began to believe it is written in the Stars — 2025 is the year to break through — and hallway conversation was no longer limited to the upcoming school production, said Grade 11 midfielder Kaia Bryant. 

“It was really evident with some of my friends,” she said. “All of us have been talking about soccer practice.”

In the Okanagan championship, the Stars needed to dispatch Revelstoke to secure a top-four finish in the tournament and the school’s first berth at a provincial championship.

The match was decided in a penalty shootout.

“Nervous, definitely, but honestly, to see our team and how far we’ve come and just worked as a group of girls, there was no doubt in our mind that we could do it once we were in that position,” Hunter said.

Added Bryant: “It was just a really kind of tense energy. I know that my mom was on the sidelines watching that game and she was like, ‘Never do that again — never do that again.”

MacFarlane witnessed a triumph nearly 10 years in the making.

“You know how nervous PKs are and we knew whoever won that was going to provincials,” MacFarlane said. “Our goalie actually made four huge saves in the shootout and we scored. And it was just elation.”

The Stars etched their place in KSA history by qualifying for the 2025 Single A Girls Soccer B.C. School Sports Championship and had no plan to exit stage left upon arrival.

“We want to show them that we’re not just there because we just scraped by and made it,” Bryant said prior to the tournament. “We’re going with a positive attitude about winning some games.”

The chances of heavy-underdog KSA winning the B.C. title were minuscule heading into the provincials, which wrapped up after the Chronicle’s press deadline.

Regardless of the result, this year’s group of Stars earned respect from opposition, said MacFarlane.

“They would look at us and go, ‘They’re Kamloops School of the Arts, so they’re going to be a pushover,’ and then all of a sudden we give ‘em a game or we go win the game,” MacFarlane said. “They’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh. We just lost 3-0. We got whipped.’ It’s been nice for me, that journey, to see their growth.”

More than 500 students from kindergarten to Grade 12 study dance, drama, music, singing and the visual arts at KSA, according to the School District 73 website.

And some of their artistry takes place on the pitch.

“I remember back when I started on the team in Grade 8, we wouldn’t have ever been able to envision this,” Bryant said. “You could see how well-developed the art programs were, but there really wasn’t much for sports. It means a lot to us. It really shows how far we’ve come.”