Surrey students walk onto BC Place pitch with World Cup players in FIFA Player Escort Program

Nearly 95 Surrey students from across the school district had the opportunity to walk alongside the world's best soccer players as official player escorts during FIFA World Cup matches at BC Place Stadium.

The rare privilege came through a partnership between Surrey Schools' Community-Schools Partnership department and Canada SCORES, an international youth soccer organization that delivers inclusive programming to underserved students. Common Goal, a global soccer initiative, helped run the escort program and opened the door for students already participating in Canada SCORES to secure priority selection.

"Any students already in the program got priority, and so already being with Canada SCORES, we were able to send as many kids as we could," said Program Facilitator James Daniels. "The excitement from the kids and their families has been amazing. With this program, we're usually able to take kids to the Whitecaps games, but this is on a whole other level."

Participating students were bussed directly from Surrey to BC Place on match days, where they spent pre-match hours in a dedicated green room stocked with food, drinks, and video game consoles running FIFA games. After walking hand-in-hand with players onto the pitch, they watched the match from the lower bowl seats.

Surrey students participated in six of the seven Vancouver World Cup matches, including Canada's historic June 18 victory against Qatar—the nation's first-ever men's World Cup win. Organizers paired students with matches meaningful to their communities when possible. Students from Hjorth Road Elementary, which has a large Egyptian population, walked out with Egypt and Mohamed Salah for their historic first-win match.

"These experiences will be lifetime memories for these children. They got to participate in historic sporting events, and you can never put a price on that kind of experience," Daniels said.