VANCOUVER - The defending national champion UBC Thunderbirds were treated to a fantastic atmosphere at Thunderbird Stadium on Thursday night. They left the home crowd happy and continued their strong preseason play with a 3-0 win over the visiting Western Washington University Vikings.
The majority of the 3,497 fans in attendance were part of Jump Start, which is a multi-day orientation program for new students. The thousands of first years in the crowd were loud all night long, celebrating their arrival at the Point Grey campus with a fun game and emphatic victory.
"We wanted to come out, put on a show and really show the UBC way," said Thunderbirds head coach
Jesse Symons. "As the game wore on, we created chances and we were able to electrify the crowd even more than what they were already giving us."
UBC was on the front foot to begin the game, creating havoc in the WWU half and forcing a number of turnovers. Rookie midfielder
Sienna Gibson had the T-Birds' best opportunity of the first 45 minutes with a curling shot from just inside the box, which was fought off by the Vikings' goalkeeper.
The tide very nearly turned with less than 10 minutes to play in the first half, when the visitors were awarded a penalty for a UBC handball in the box. However, T-Birds goalkeeper
Dakota Beckett brought the crowd to its feet with a strong dive to her right to make the save.
The score remained 0-0 until the 74
th minute, when Gibson slipped an incisive pass into the box to
Holly Whelan, who smashed it home to open the scoring. From that point on it was all Thunderbirds, as they created chance after chance in the final 20 minutes.
That hard work paid off as the home side doubled their advantage with a stunning goal in the 84
th. Whelan turned provider, feeding the ball to
Hannah Bains at the top of the penalty box. The first-year midfielder then spun and placed her shot perfectly into the top corner, earning the biggest roar of the night from the stands.
UBC added one more goal in stoppage time.
Maddy Norman, yet another rookie, scooped up a sloppy back-pass by a Vikings defender, rounded the goalie, and calmly slotted it home to make it 3-0.
Coach Symons was very pleased with his team's performance, noting that it won't be easy to pick out who will get the minutes in the regular season.
"It's going to be very hard for us to make decisions here," added Symons. "With all the first years watching and first years scoring, it's quite impressive to see how much depth we have, and I'm excited to see how our season starts off."
The Thunderbirds' quest to repeat as U-SPORTS champions begins on Friday, September 6
th in Victoria. Their first Canada West home game is on Friday, September 13
th against UBC Okanagan. Kickoff is set for 5:00 p.m. at Thunderbird Stadium.
