The Thompson Rivers University WolfPack men's soccer team knew they would be in a battle from the opening whistle on Friday night, September 19.  After all, the first year CIS team was pitted against the defending conference and national champion University of British Columbia Thunderbirds.

The fans at Hillside Stadium saw the upstart WolfPack fall 3-0 to the T-Birds.  UBC is now unbeaten in five starts while Thompson Rivers falls to 0-2-1.

"I thought for the first 70 minutes that we did hold our own," said WolfPack head coach John Antulov. "After that initial 15 minutes, we started to settle down. But after they scored their second goal, our young legs got a little bit rattled."

Said UBC Coach Mike Mosher: "We certainly had a large amount of possession. I would have liked us to score a few more goals from it.  At the end of the day, we certainly wore them down as the game went on."

The Thunderbirds opened the scoring in the 18th minute as Milad Mehrabi (4^th year midfielder, Coquitlam, BC) sent a through ball to Sean Einersson (2^nd year midfielder, Surrey, BC).  He scored on his own rebound as he beat Travis Froehlich (4^th year, keeper, Revelstoke, BC).

In the 34th minute, UBC had a chance to go up by two.  WolfPack midfielder Satinder Dhaliwal (2^nd year, Surrey, BC), who was playing against his former mates, was called for a hand ball in the box. That allowed Nial Cousens (4^th year, forward, Vancouver, BC) to take a penalty shot.  But he was 'stoned' by Froehlich who made a brilliant save to his left as Cousens tried to go low.

In the second half, the T-Birds went up by two as Navid Mashinci (5th year, midfielder, Port Coquitlam, BC) showed why he is the Canada West's leading scorer. He crossed the ball to the front of the next where Bryan Fong (3^rd year, defender, Coquitlam, BC) got his head on the ball in the 61st minute.

Fifteen minutes later, Mehrabi launched a rocket from outside the 18-yard box that eluded Froehlich to close out the scoring. It was Mehrabi's first goal of the year.

The WolfPack coach gave credit to his keeper for keeping the score close. "That is what we need Travy for. He is one of our captains and our leaders.  The last 15 minutes saw things getting carried away and Travis made some great stops. I thought the three goals they did score were national champion goals.  The fact we could hold them to three with our young guys was pretty good."

Antulov had praise for some of his youngsters including Finlay McPhie (1^st year, defender, Vernon, BC), who was named the TRU Bookstore/McDonalds "Leader of the Pack" player of the match.  "He was strong. I thought Logan Zimmerman (1^st year, midfielder, Kamloops, BC) had some good speed. Mike Bennett (1^st year, defender, Vernon,BC) played well. No excuses but we were missing four starters and that had an impact on our depth. At the same time, it was great to get our young players in. They are going up against the national champions. It was great for them to get that experience. I thought our young guys played pretty well. The whole point of this is to get those guys playing time too."

The WolfPack had a number of regulars out of their line up with injuries or other issues including defenders Stef Shaw (4^th year, Duncan, BC) and Corey Wallis (4^th year, Enderby, BC).

UBC had 25 shots in the contest including 14 on goal.  Eight of those shots came in the second half.  TRU managed only five shots at keeper Richard Meister (5^th year, Port Moody, BC).

The WolfPack will close out their home stand on Saturday afternoon (September 20) when the U Vic Vikes come to town. Kick off is 2:45 pm.

The match can be seen on CanadaWest.TV.