Entering 2019 season
Canada West championships: 2016
Conference record: 25-8-9
Canada West playoff record: 8-3
U SPORTS Championship record: 2-1
Jesse Symons continues to add to the legacy of UBC Thunderbirds women’s soccer, the most successful university program in all of Canada. Symons enters his fourth season as the head coach of the team after being named to the position in May 2016.
He holds a record of 25-8-9 in Canada West regular season games over the past three years. In that same span, Symons’ teams are 8-3 in league playoff games, and 2-1 in U SPORTS Women’s Soccer Championship tournament contests.
In 2018, the Thunderbirds went 10-3-1 in the Canada West, with Michelle Jang earning the conference’s Rookie of the Year award. UBC beat Northern BC in the quarter-final round, ultimately finishing fourth in the Canada West playoffs.
Jasmin Dhanda’s Canada West and U SPORTS Player of the Year recognition highlighted the 2017 campaign, which saw the T-Birds go 9-2-3 in conference play, and 3-1 in the Canada West playoffs, resulting in a bronze medal.
In Symons’ first season at UBC, the T-Birds went 6-3-5 and then went undefeated in four playoff games to claim their second-consecutive Canada West title with a 3-0 victory over the Trinity Western Spartans on their own turf.
At the U SPORTS Women’s Soccer Championship in Wolfville, N.S., the UBC advanced to the final by dispatching hosts Acadia in the quarter-final, and Queen’s in the semifinal, which went to penalty kicks. In the championship game, the T-Birds fell 2-1 to Laval to take home silver.
Symons, who is a certified Canadian Soccer Association coach, has a wealth of experience.
Before UBC, his most recent position was as both technical director and Premier League head coach for the North Shore Girls’ Soccer Club. In this role, he was integral in entering the first-ever Canadian franchise in the Women’s Premier Soccer League, a 100-team organization based in the United States. Prior to his time with the North Shore Girls’ Soccer Club, Symons served 10 years as the head coach of the Vancouver Whitecaps Football Club W-League team and Girls Elite program.
Symons was an integral part of creating the Vancouver Whitecaps Elite REX program in 2015 helping work with the national team program / staff in building the pathway for high potential youth players in Canada. He also holds the distinction of being the only coach to win two Canada Games national championships with Team BC, in 2009 and 2013. Symons has eight years of experience working with Provincial programs from 2002-06, then 2009 and 2013. He also served as the head coach for the PCSL treble in 2013 against Northwest opposition from Oregon, Washington and BC.
Through his experience building championship-level programs in British Columbia, Symons has developed connections and contacts that have enabled him to continually attract this country’s top student-athletes to UBC.
Additionally, Symons has volunteered as an assistant coach for the past two seasons with the UBC softball team, which has qualified for the Cascade Collegiate Conference championship tournament both times.
