Cascades climb past Calgary in extra time

The University of the Fraser Valley Cascades booked their berth into Sunday’s Canada West men’s soccer semi-final with a battling performance over 120 minutes over the Calgary Dinos at UBC’s Thunderbird Stadium Friday evening.

Defender Adam Szymanski was the UFV hero, finally breaking the deadlock in a tense and close affair in the final minutes of the first half of extra time. Szymanski was equally superb on the defensive side, preventing a Calgary equalizer with a last ditch tackle in the box, before Grischa Heider secured the victory with a second in the 120th minute.

“Another good battle, it always seems to be a really good battle when we play them,” UFV head coach Tom Lowndes said after the match. “They’re a quality team full of veterans and we had to be at our best today, especially defensively. We weathered some storms, but I felt the first 20 minutes of both halves we looked good.

“They’ve got a lot of attacking weapons, but I thought we defended fantastically. It’s kind of the same story as last year. We talked about it. If we’re not great with the ball, we need to be great without the ball, and tonight we were really good. We’ll rest up now and get to go for maybe another epic battle again on Sunday afternoon.”

It always felt that there would be little to choose between the two sides, in their first meeting of the season, and it proved to be the case, needing 120 minutes to finally separate the two.

Fraser Valley came out on the front foot, but as the first half went on Calgary started to stamp their authority on the match, creating the best chances to break the deadlock but denied by some excellent saves from Cascades goalkeeper Matheus De Souza.

UFV’s best chance came in the 29th minute when Milan Ponjevic sliced an attempted clearance of his own bar in the wet conditions, but no Cascades player was able to get onto the rebound. 

The Dinos pushed hard to go in with the lead, but De Souza kept out chances from both Soliman Aria and Victor Gouttin. 

The second half didn’t produce too many goalscoring opportunities but Dinos keeper Hany Shafie produced a great save to tip a Szymanski shot onto his bar and over, before De Souza produced a sprawling stop to turn an Owen Antonuik free kick around his near post.

The deadlock was finally broken in the 104th minute when the Dinos could only clear a corner to Szymanski at the edge of the box and his rocket of a shot flew past Shafie and into the net.

Calgary pushed hard for a late leveller but couldn’t find a way through a resolute backline and the game finished in chaotic scenes as Calgary saw James Greco-Taylor and Antonuik red-carded, while Fraser Valley also lost captain Harjoven Sidhu to a red card after an incident following the Cascades’ second. 

UFV will now play either UBC or Alberta in Sunday’s semi-final at Thunderbird Stadium, where a win will secure them a place at next month’s U SPORTS men’s soccer nationl championship in Toronto. Kick-off Sunday is 1:00 p.m. and can be viewed live on Canada West TV - Powered by BioSteel.