40th Annual Championship

The top seeded UBC Thunderbirds played to a 1-1 draw with their Canada West rival Victoria Vikes as Day 2 of the 40th CIS-FHC field hockey championship wrapped up at U of T’s Back Campus Fields on Friday night.

The tie pushes the host Toronto Varsity Blues (2-0-0) into Sunday’s championship final and drops the fourth-seeded Guelph Gryphons (0-2-0) into the bronze-medal match for the sixth straight year.

A win or tie for the Vikes (1-0-1) tomorrow versus the Blues will solidify their spot in the final. They kick off the last day of round robin action Saturday at 1 p.m.

“If we can do things collectively rather than individually I think we’ll have more success,” said Vikes head coach Lynne Beecroft, in her 31^st season at the helm. “U of T is a very strong team. They’ve obviously proven that with a 3-0 win over UBC so we know we have our work cut out for us tomorrow.”

In the result of a Victoria loss tomorrow, the Thunderbirds will have to win big versus the Gryphons to tie the Vikes in the standings and secure the goal differential tiebreaker.

Robin D’Abreo the first year UBC Head Coach told the media “We’re going to get back to focusing on the process, as we’ve done all year and I think we have to focus on our game plan and execute our set plays with a little more consistency and efficiency as we look to put our best foot forward tomorrow.”

The Vikes opened the scoring in the eighth minute as third-year veteran Kathleen Leahy of Victoria fired the ball into the bottom of the net.

2014 CIS all-Canadian Hannah Haughn notched UBC’s first goal of the tournament in the 23^rd minute as she sent a booming shot off a penalty corner through the legs of Victoria goalie Sheriden Goodmanson.

“I think we played a bit better than yesterday,” added Beecorft. “I thought we had some good opportunities to score and Lauren Logush made some great saves for them. It could have been a different outcome for sure.”

Both teams had numerous chances to score, with both Goodmanson and Logush registering save after save to keep the game even until the final whistle.

“I am really proud of the girls,” added UBC’s D’Abreo. “I think the biggest difference between yesterday and today was that we came out confident and came out looking to assert our style of play. Yesterday we were a little intimidated by the gravity of the situation and today we looked more like ourselves.”

Thanks to Jill Clark, Sports Information Coordinator, University of Toronto