Boys soccer teams have been going on foreign tours for many years. This year, it will be the Ellsworth soccer girls’ turn, in a breakthrough for Hancock County.

Coach Jennifer Myers says she has had it in mind for several years but only this year found enough players and willing parents to make it a go. She has put together a group of 18 girls – 15 from Ellsworth High School, two from the middle school, and one from George Stevens Academy, for the trip to England and Italy in June and July.

The travelers will number about 40, including families and the co-chairwomen of the project, Karen Richter and Debbie Crowley. Shane Lowell, youth sports director at the Downeast Family YMCA helped coach the girls and arrange for the tour.

To help pay for the trip, the Ellsworth Girls Soccer Club has raised $16,000 through a raffle, a lobster dinner, sale of Christmas wreaths and, most recently, a soccer tournament with 48 teams from throughout Maine that that was played in four Ellsworth gyms and brought in more than $6,000. The group hopes to raise enough to pay half of the $2,250 the trip will cost each player.

The Ellsworth party leaves on June 28 for England and will train a couple of days in Manchester and tour the area before playing a local team there. After a day of sightseeing in London, the group goes to Italy for a part in an international soccer tournament in Rimini and more sightseeing before returning home on July 8.

Although high school girls soccer teams from other parts of the state have traveled abroad, the Ellsworth girls seem able to claim as first for Hancock County. It should be a terrific experience for them and yet another step toward equality in sports.

In the future, with soccer’s mounting popularity, such traffic could well run commonly in both directions. The encouraging success of the U.S. women’s soccer program may lead the way.