VANCOUVER – The UBC Thunderbirds rallied after allowing an early Alberta Golden Bears goal to win their 24th Canada West men's soccer championship with a hard-fought 3-2 victory at Thunderbird Stadium on Friday evening.
Caden Ruby had fired Alberta ahead in the 19th minute when he was played in by a nice pass inside from leading scorer Justin George.
UBC levelled things up on the half hour mark when Brennan Fuerst blasted home his first goal of the year as Alberta failed to clear their lines from a free kick.
That was how things stood at half time, but UBC needed only eight minutes after the re-start to go ahead for the first time on the night when
Lucas Dasovic rose superbly to had home a
Nicolas Nadeau corner.
It was a lead they weren't to give up and
Henri Godbout made it three just past the hour mark, brilliantly finishing a
Theo Afework cutback into the far corner.
Alberta weren't done yet, however, and pulled one back from Anson Minty's nice volley in the 76th minute, to set up a tense ending.
Sebastian Agerskov hit the outside of the post for the Thunderbirds as they tried to close out the game, but the Golden Bears held firm and put some real pressure on UBC on stoppage time but couldn't find the tying goal to take the game to extra time and the home side prevailed for title number 24.
"Some nervy moments for sure," UBC head coach
Mike Mosher noted after the match. "Proud of the boys. Adversity. You know it's going to be a difficult game because they're a good side, they ask questions. We go down to the early goal in the counter, but that's where we've been in those moments, so no panic.
"We'd had most of the ball. We knew we were going to create, so fine. A good reaction coming out of the break. We get up 3-1 and yeah, I would have liked to see us see it out a little bit better than what we did, but we got it across the line."
The Thunderbirds now await news of their U SPORTS quarter-final opponent as UBC heads across Georgia Strait to Victoria for their 11th straight national championship tournament appearance starting next Thursday, November 11.
