VANCOUVER – The UBC Thunderbirds capped off a dominant Canada West season with a 2-1 victory over their old foes the Trinity Western Spartans at Thunderbird Stadium on Saturday night to capture the T-Birds' first conference title since 2016.
Katalin Tolnai's seventh goal in three playoff matches and a first half strike from
Sophie Damian gave UBC a two goal lead at the break. Trinity Western came storming back in the second half, and Sierra Halldorson reduced the deficit to one but UBC held on to claim their 16th Canada West banner.
"What a year," a jubilant UBC head coach
Jesse Symons said after the match. "For me, the players through and through worked so hard for this. They came and competed every game and we got the best out of every team every game. We were able to come out on top and full credit to them, they were phenomenal this game. Trinity battled so hard against us and made it tight. We had to hold on and that's what this conference is about. Every game is so tight and we found a way. We started off so well, which we've been doing all season, so it was great to see that to start the game today too."
Their fast paced start reaped its reward again just five minutes in when Sophia Ferreira played a fantastic long ball forward for Tolnai to chase down, and she timed her run to perfection to run in on goal, and coolly slot past Hannah Miller.
Trinity Western regrouped and enjoyed their best spell of pressure without really testing
Sarah Johns in the UBC goal.
The Spartans' inability to turn that pressure into an equaliser was punished in the 26th minute when Damian fired home the Thunderbirds' second, bringing down a
Danielle Steer knock on from a perfectly weighted long free kick into the box from Emma Hooten, shrugging off a challenge, and tucking it away past Miller.
UBC wanted to put the game to bed early and kept the pressure on. They had chances to do so with an Ella Sunde header and a Ferreira shot, but had to settle for a two goal lead at the half.
Both teams came out with a lot of intensity to start the second half, with the Spartans just edging things, and they got their reward in the 58th minute to reduce the deficit to one.
A long corner to the back post was met by Holland Stiel, who delicately played it back in across goal for Halldorson to put it away.
UBC nearly restored their two goal lead immediately with a fantastic
Nisa Reehal strike that was met by an equally fantastic acrobatic save from Miller.
Reehal was sent clear in the 80th minute, but as she bore down on goal Jessica Vance did just enough defensively to stop her having a clean strike and Miller made the save at her near post.
The Spartans pushed for the late leveller but couldn't find the breakthrough.
Trinity Western now turn their attention to next week's U SPORTS nationals, having clinched their spot with their semi-final win over Thompson Rivers on Friday night.
"Again, we were the makers of our own problems," Spartans head coach Graham Roxburgh said after the match. "It's just frustrating. They're a good team, you give them a sniff and they're going to score. The difference for me was they got their three or four chances and buried two, we had three or four good balls into the box in the first half but not enough hunger, not enough fight to keep the ball alive because we generated enough to score. Second half I said, girls, we didn't play well, we didn't give a good account of ourselves. All you've got to do now is go and do that and if you do that the game is going to change and it did."
UBC head off to nationals as the number one ranked team in the country, as they look to claim their eighth national championship and follow up their success in 2019 that also featured many members of Symons' current group.
"We've got a mature team and we've got a lot of players that have won a national championship," Symons said. "They felt the defeat last year in the semi-final. We're a team that objective one was to win the league, then we found a way to host, which was even better, now we're going to enjoy winning Canada West. It's such a hard conference to win. We'll enjoy this but next week is going to be tough. There's a lot of talented teams there. We're going to put our best foot forward to get back into that semi-final and make amends for last year."
