A pair of second half goals three minutes apart proved to be the difference as the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack women's soccer team dropped their second straight match in Canada West play.
The WolfPack fell 2-1 to the visiting University of Fraser Valley Cascades. Fraser Valley moved to three wins and a loss on the season while TRu is winless in two starts.
After a scoreless first half, TRU got on the board in the 62nd minute. 2013 PACWEST second team all-star Kelsey Martin (3rd year, midfield, Kamloops, BC) ripped a long shot from 45 yards out which seemed to fool Cascade keeper Kayla Klim (3rd year, Burnaby, BC).
Fraser Valley responded on a set play in the 75 th minute. Tristan Corneil (3rdyear, defender, Surrey BC) took a corner kick on the right side of the field. The ball wound up on the head of former WolfPack Megan Baird (2nd year, defender, Cloverdale, BC).
Baird beat Thompson Rivers keeper Emily Edmundson (5th year, Kamloops, BC).
Then in the 78 th minute, a scramble in front of the WolfPack goal resulted in Monika Levarsky (1st year, forward, Surrey, BC) scoring the go ahead goal. Levarsky had 12 of the Cascades' 21 shots on goals in the contest.
Fraser Valley Coach Robert Giesbrecht felt his team was lucky to pull it out. " Full credit to TRU. They came out and played great. They were fully deserving of the 1-0 lead. I am proud of the character of my team to come back. We have been on the receiving end of a game like this earlier in the year against Trinity."
"We had them for most of the game and proved we can play at this level," said WolfPack head coach Tom McManus. " We should have won tonight. Unfortunately, the corner kick they got was too much for us. They were throwing players up and we didn't have the coverage for it."
Giesbrecht said there was some irony that Baird came back to haunt her old teammates. " Megan is a great girl. Tom did a great job with her last year. She is a woman of great character. Sadly she has some family issues and had to move closer to them. This was an emotional day for her. She is an outstanding future and we are lucky to have her on our team."
The contest was very physical with players on both sides winding up on the pitch in pain. McManus says the 'smaller in stature' WolfPack can handle the heavy going. " We can compete. I think we were giving as much as we were getting for the most part. It was the grabbing that wasn't being called that makes me upset. It is silly at this level."
Bronwyn Crawford (5th year, midfield, Kamloops, BC) was named the TRU Bookstore/McDonalds " Leader of the Pack" player of the match. " B was fantastic again today, " said McManus. "She was winning everything in the air. She was getting fouled constantly in the back as she was going up. But she is strong enough to stay up. The girl she was marking wasn't as strong. She would wind up going down and we kept getting the call against us."
Crawford felt the team got over the nerves of debuting in the CIS on Friday for this match. "We were confident, strong and fast. We held our own and thought we had this game. This was a hard game to lose. Two let downs on defence cost us."
The Cascades will host the UNBC Timberwolves next weekend (Sept 19-20) while the WolfPack will entertain the UBC Thunderbirds on Friday and the UVIC Vikes on Saturday. The T-Birds match has a 5 pm start time with the UVIC game going at noon.
McManus felt his team had a better effort on Saturday than they did in a 3-1 loss to defending CIS champion Trinity Western on Friday. "Obviously disappointing with two losses. I don't think we deserved them. Yesterday, Trinity was definitely the better team. Today we were and we should have had the victory. We will go into training on Monday and get things turned around."