Once again, Jessica King came through in the clutch.
The Trinity Western Spartans women’s soccer team has won a dozen games — regular season and playoffs combined — this season, and eight times King has delivered the winning strike.
King took a pass up from the middle from Alessandra Oliverio and carried the ball between a pair of Fraser Valley (UFV) Cascades defenders to the top of the penalty area. From there, King unleashed a perfectly-placed ball over goaltender Kayla Kim and into the top left corner of the net.
The goal in the 61st minute gave the Spartans a 2-0 advantage — Jennifer Castillo had opened the scoring in the 24th minute — and proved to be huge as the Cascades Shelby Beck got one back in the 72nd minute. But in the end, it was the Spartans winning 2-1 on Saturday night at TWU’s Rogers Field for the program’s sixth Canada West championship.
Both TWU and UFV had already qualified for this week’s CIS national championships in Quebec City with semifinal victories the night before.
King, who was named Canada West most valuable player and a first team all-star at the awards banquet on Thursday night, said all that was going through her mind on the breakaway was finishing her chance.
“Just put the ball in the back of the net, that’s it,” she said.
King thought she had a second goal, in the 81st minute, but it was called off to an offside call.
The fifth-year senior said the team is just happy to be heading back to the national championships. The Spartans are the two-time defending CIS champions.
“This (qualifying for nationals) is what we wanted to do and know we can focus on Quebec,” King said.
The Spartans had lost the Canada West gold-medal game in 2013.
“Last year, (that loss) gave us a little bit of fire, but it is always nice to win,” she said.
Spartans coach Graham Roxburgh thought his team should have had the game put away earlier.
“I am disappointed we gave away that goal, because that made it tense,” he said.
“(But) credit to my girls, we kept our heads in the end and we handled the last few minutes.”
Goalkeeper Christina Oliverio made three saves for the Spartans. Kim finished with nine saves, including three or four spectacular stops.
Winning the Canada West banner is always a nice feat, but the national championship is always the end goal.
“To win Canada West is awesome, but obviously we have bigger things in mind,” Roxburgh said.
The coach said they had question marks at the start of the season, but early on, it was evident, the talent was there.
“We had some question marks (at the start of the season). Any time you add some rookies … you just never quite know how everyone is going to gel and fit together,” he said.
“But we probably felt it early on that we were starting to come together and had the potential to be very good.”
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The Spartans play their quarter-final match on Thursday against the University of Ontario Institute of Technology Ridgebacks. Game time is 10:30 a.m. PST.
The Ridgbebacks are the Ontario University Association bronze medallists.
Scott Stewart/TWU Athletics
The Trinity Western Spartans women’s soccer team captured their sixth Canada West banner with a 2-1 victory over the UFV Cascades on Saturday night at TWU’s Rogers Field. Both teams advance to this week’s CIS national championships in Quebec City.
