VANCOUVER – Sebastian Dzikowski scored the only goal of the match in the 27^th minute as the UBC Thunderbirds held off a valiant Victoria Vikes attack to claim a fourth consecutive Canada West banner.

Having already secured a trip to the U SPORTS National Championship by advancing to Sunday's gold medal match, the T-Birds now head to the big dance as the top Canada West seed in search of a record 14^th title.

"It feels absolutely wonderful, just given all the challenges we went through, just really, really pleased for the group," said UBC Head Coach Mike Mosher following the 21^st conference title in program history. "They went through a lot, they stuck to the path and we just said 'hey, get us to playoffs and we'll be fine', and here we be."

? MSOC | Make it FOUR in a row! With the 1-0 final, @ubcmsoc are the 2021 @CanadaWest champions! pic.twitter.com/onu7itf3ut

— UBC Thunderbirds (@ubctbirds) November 7, 2021

What turned out to be the lone goal on a windy but sunny Calgary afternoon came 27 minutes in when Nicholas Momotani turned on the jets and got to the ball as it neared the goal line. The rookie then played the ball into the area for Dzikowski who used his left foot to play it off a Vikes defender and past goalkeeper Harjot Nijjar.

All eight of UBC's shots on target came in the opening half as the Vikes pressed hard coming out of the break. But the T-Birds were able to withstand the pressure from their division rivals while rookie keeper Bennett McKay made five of his 12 saves in the final 45 minutes.

"That's the learning opportunities that we've gone through," said Mosher of his team's resilience on Sunday. "We've lost some of those leads early on and we've worked at it and become better in managing and seeing games out. We gave away a few free kicks we would have preferred not to but once we survived that we had a good spell of possession to see the game out over the last ten minutes or so."

UBC's fourth straight Canada West banner also makes it five in the last six seasons and seven in the last nine, but their first championship won on the road since 2012.

"One of the goals of this program is to win a Canada West championship, that's pretty special," continued Mosher. "Four in a row now for us, that's quite an accomplishment and a feather in our groups' hat and many of them have been here for several of those championships."

The 'Birds will get some time to both rest and prepare for the upcoming U SPORTS tournament which gets underway on Thursday, November 18^th in Ottawa, hosted by Carleton University.