Abbotsford (Jordie Arthur) – Men’s Soccer: Goals from Mainella and Brar help Cascades rise past Heat
The University of the Fraser Valley men’s soccer team got their first win of their season with a 2-0 victory over the visiting UBC Okanagan Heat on Saturday afternoon at Rotary Stadium.
Both teams traded chances throughout the first half, but four saves from UFV’s Jackson Cowx, and three saves from UBCO’s Jaxon Scholfield kept the game scoreless.
The Cascades finally found the breakthrough in the 77th minute as a turnover in the UBCO half was quickly pounced on by UFV and played across the box where Mikael Mainella made no mistake burying it in the bottom right corner.
Just three minutes later the Cascades struck again, as Charandeep Rangi found Manpal Brar in the box and his shot managed to sneak by Scolfield to double the lead in the 80th minute.
With the win the Cascades improve to 1-1 on the season, while the Heat see their record drop to 0-3-1.
“It’s obviously nice to get in the win column and I thought we deserved it today” said UFV head coach Tom Lowndes “We got our chances, and we took them in the last 20 minutes. I thought we managed the last 10 minutes of the game really well and saw it out.”
“It took us awhile last year to find the back of the net, and it was five games before we got a win and then we went on a run, so it’s obviously nice to get that early on.”
Jacobo Saenz Ramos led the Heat with two shots on goal, while Brar and Trevor Zannatta paced the Cascades with three shots on goal apiece.
Lowndes applauded his team’s ability to create chances, but acknowledged they will need to work on finishing those opportunities moving forward, as they racked up 27 shot attempts, but only managing to get eight of those on target.
“I thought Brar played well today, and Mainella was a real handful, and Ivan Mejia as well. I thought we caused a lot of problems, it was just about if we could we take those opportunities” he explained, “we have to be better next week because we might not get as many chances, and we need to capitalize on them.”
The Cascades are on the road next week as they visit the Victoria Vikes on Friday Sept. 9 (7:15 p.m. kickoff), before finishing the weekend against the UBC Thunderbirds on Saturday (7:30 p.m. kickoff). Both games are available on canadawest.tv.
