Thursday, Nov. 12
This was a long day of soccer at Varsity Centre. With four quarterfinal games starting at 11 a.m. and going past 9 p.m., it perhaps was a bit too much soccer for my tastes. I didn’t stay very long to watch all the games or competitions live, for the sake of a sore behind and cold feet.
It was not for lack of trying. But when you have two overtime games that extended the action for at least an extra hour and a half, you find yourself wishing for the great indoors after awhile in what was quickly becoming the freezing cold concrete stadium stands. Thankfully, SSN Canada would provide some very useful webcasts of all 11 games in the tournament, including the tense back-breakers that some of the Thursday games became. It meant that I could go home, boot up the computer and view at my leisure, without worrying about freezing to death as soon as the sun went down.
I will say that the competition in the CIS men’s soccer tournament out of British Columbia looked absolutely top notch and are rightfully the favourites to go to the final. Trinity Western University is in fact the defending champion, and as far as I saw in their 1-0 win against the University of Prince Edward Island, they looked like a real threat to repeat.
Friday, Nov. 13
Today was a shorter day, with only two games. But as they were consolation games played by the losers of Thursday’s games, it left me a little less intrigued at the results.
One of the games involved both teams from the Atlantic University Sports conference in a battle that thankfully did not go into overtime, though it was close—UPEI would manage to score the lone goal in the 93rd minute.
The other game was a familiar all-Ontario University Athletics meeting between Toronto and York in the consolation semi-final, with Toronto just managing to come out on top of the defending OUA champions, holding on with a 1-0 win. Needless to say, York had a disappointing tournament this year. They really should have done better, but unfortunately, they came out on the wrong side of the dice in both their games this tournament.
Saturday, Nov. 14
Where did all these Trinity Western Spartan fans come from? I couldn’t believe how pro-Spartan the crowd was watching the semi-final game against Queen’s. One would have thought that the “home” team Queen’s would have been the more popular team of the two.
Queens led 1-0 in the game and had they held it, it could have been one of the biggest upsets in the tournament. However, Trinity Western tied it with only moments left, resulting in the tournament’s third overtime game and another rear-numbing experience. In overtime, Trinity Western proved why they are the defending champions, largely dominating the play. But they saved all their finishes for penalty kicks, where five players beat the Queen’s goalkeeper five times amid huge cheers as they move on to the championship game.
I’m not crazy about these single-elimination tournaments. I understand it is the best solution with regards to time but I can’t help but feel that in doing so, it leaves a little too much to chance in terms of which teams move on, and which teams get eliminated from gold medal contention. Take the Montreal and UBC semi-final game. As far as I’m concerned, UBC’s offensive game was superior to Montreal’s. But Montreal had lucky horseshoes stuffed in their cleats. Their defence stopped what should have been at least two sure-fire goals as they preserved their 1-0 lead for the win. Even the only goal of that game seemed to have been the product of a lucky break.
UBC was the better team as far as I was concerned, but because of a bad break, they won’t be playing their biggest rivals in the gold medal game.
The consolation final saw the Varsity Blues rise above their UPEI opponents. They played one of their best games in a long time as they put in a complete team game that would allow them to finish in fifth place in the tournament after not even making the OUA semi-finals this year. And it really felt good to see them achieve this success. After two years of severe disappointment in the playoffs, it was time to see their hard work pay off on this huge stage. I can only hope they will learn from it and be able to apply the experience to the team next year.
Sunday, Nov. 14
It’s finally the finals! After watching live nine games on my computer these past three days, I’m about done with watching soccer for the next little while. Too much of a good thing isn’t always a good thing.
Queen’s opened the scoring in the bronze medal game against UBC, but like yesterday, couldn’t hold onto their lead as they eventually fell 2-1. I have to give Queen’s a lot of credit. They did twice as good as I expected them to in this tournament, coming within a minute of facilitating a major upset. Athough they fell short of the podium in falling to the better team, they indicated that with another year, they probably could prove to be a dangerous threat to British Columbia’s women’s soccer supremacy.
The gold medal game was yet another long affair. Trinity Western and Montreal would play their way to a nil-nil stalemate amid some really mind-numbing defence that was broken only in penalty kicks won by Trinity Western, marking them as the third team in history to successfully defend a CIS women’s soccer championship title.
I didn’t expect the game to go to penalty kicks, but I did expect the final result. Trinity Western was clearly the best team in that game and even the best team in the tournament. They play at a competition level above what I saw from some of the other teams in the tournament, which was a treat to watch.
Overall, I was very impressed walking away from the event, both with the quality of the athletes and the high standard of production provided by the University of Toronto, which hosted the event. My only wish is that the stands didn’t appear as empty as they did at times during the tournament, which seemed to exemplify the lack of student awareness to these kinds of events at the university. But for those that were there to witness it, the energy was vibrant and exciting.
