EDMONTON – The UBC Thunderbirds have advanced to the Canada West championship final for the first time since 2016 with a 1-0 win over their arch-rival Trinity Western Spartans at Edmonton's Clarke Stadium Friday afternoon.
Rookie midfielder
Nisa Reehal scored the only goal of the game in the 78
th minute, blasting the ball from the top of the area, just overtop a diving Hannah Miller as the T-Birds have also clinched a berth at next week's U SPORTS national championship tournament hosted by the University of Victoria.
"What a team effort to push through to get to the Canada West final and also get a spot at nationals," said UBC head coach
Jesse Symons. "We showed such great quality all over the park to shut down attacks and also created a few chances. I felt we were unlucky not to be up after the first half and we kept the momentum going."
"It was so exciting," said Reehal after scoring her first career Canada West playoff goal just 17 minutes after being subbed on. "I'm so happy to have fought for my team and come on as a sub. It just felt so good to make a difference. I'm just so proud of everyone for working so hard and working for each other."
The favoured Spartans came oh so close to knotting the match off a corner kick in the 83
rd. Trinity's Rachel Hutchinson swung the ball towards the far side of the net, but it hit the inside of the post and bounced out before being cleared away.
That late chance was as close as Trinity would come as UBC keeper
Emily Moore stopped all three shots on target. The 'Birds doubled TWU's chances on net while the Spartans earned five corners to UBC's three.
"From
Emily Moore out, we have been exceptional at the back," Symons said, praising his squad. "Jess (Williams) and Jacqueline (Tyrer) have formed a tremendous CB pairing and I can't say enough of the personality that our senior fullbacks Marisa (Mastropieri), Amelia (Crawford), and Anisha (Sangha) are doing in both attack and defending structure."
After Trinity Western earned a win and a draw in the two schools' head-to-head meetings this regular season, UBC won their first match against the two-time defending Canada West champions since October of 2017.
The win advances the 'Birds to Saturday's conference gold medal match against the Calgary Dinos who dispatched the host MacEwan Griffins on penalty kicks in Friday's earlier semifinal.
UBC and Calgary played to a 0-0 draw in their only regular season meeting in 2019, just two weeks ago in Vancouver. The 'Birds and Dinos last playoff matchup came in last year's conference semifinal where Calgary advanced to the gold medal match with a 2-1 win.
Kickoff for Saturday's Canada West championship is set for 2:00 p.m. PT at Clarke Stadium.
