Entering 2020 season
U SPORTS national championships: 2019
Canada West Championships: 2016
Conference record: 41-12-17
Canada West playoff record: 14-5
U SPORTS championships record: 5-1
Jesse Symons enters his sixth season as the head coach of the UBC women’s soccer program after leading the Thunderbirds to the 2019 U SPORTS Women’s Soccer Championship, the seventh in the school’s history.
UBC was superb in winning all three matches at the 2019 U SPORTS national tournament via 1-0 shutouts. The T-Birds beat Montreal, Acadia, and Calgary at Victoria’s Centennial Stadium to extend their U SPORTS-best total of national titles to seven. Danielle Steer scored the game-winning goal in the final, and was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player.Â
After a successful 8-2-4 Canada West regular season in 2019, UBC won three playoff games to advance to the league playoff final, where the team fell 1-0 to Calgary.
Symons was named head coach in May 2016 and has added to the legacy of UBC Thunderbirds women’s soccer, the most successful university program in all of Canada. Symons is in his fifth season as the head coach of the team and holds a record of 41-12-17 in Canada West regular season games.
Since the start of his tenure, Symons’ teams are 14-5 in league playoff games, and 5-1 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 ultimately finished 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 2016 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 – 2006, 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.
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