The University of the Fraser Valley men’s soccer team dropped a 2-0 decision to the Winnipeg Wesmen on Friday evening in the Manitoba capital.
The Wesmen’s Krysztof Szulc opened the scoring in the 65th minute, and Oluwasegun Akinshipe added another in injury time as the Cascades were pressing forward looking for the equalizer.
Winnipeg picked up its first win of the season to improve to 1-7-1, while UFV fell to 3-3-1. The Cascades wrap up their weekend road swing on Sunday against the Saskatchewan Huskies (2:15 p.m. CST).
Tammer Byrne and the Cascades were knocked off 2-0 by Winnipeg on Friday.
“We just didn’t show up . . . and if you don’t show up in every Canada West game, you’re going to get in trouble,” Cascades head coach Tom Lowndes said. “The simple fact is, we weren’t good enough tonight. Full credit to them – they were hungry.”
The home side had some early forays into Cascades’ territory, but the UFV defence and keeper David Hicks were able to keep them at bay.
The Cascades found traction as the first half wore on, and generated a couple of great looks. Gurmaan Jhaj blasted a shot that appeared headed for the top corner, but Winnipeg goalkeeper Joshua Partaker got a hand on it and tipped it over the bar to keep the game deadlocked at zeroes heading into the break. In the opening minute of the second half, Justin Sekhon was all alone in front of the Wesmen net but Partaker stopped him flush.
The Wesmen got on the board on a perfectly placed strike from Szulc. From the right edge of the 18-yard box, his shot found the top corner inside the far post.
Shortly thereafter, Hicks came up with a huge save to keep his team within a goal, diving to his right to parry a hard, low shot from close range by Aaron Hidalgo-Mazzei. He later smothered close-range effort from Jashandeep Sangha.
The Cascades made a push in the late going and had a couple of scrambles in the box where they couldn’t find one last touch to poke the ball home. Then, in injury time, Hicks came forward to try to get on the end of a corner kick by Connor MacMillan, and he nearly did. But the Wesmen managed to clear, and Akinshipe sprinted ahead and rolled a shot from just past the centre line into the empty net.
– with files from Sheldon Appelle, Winnipeg Wesmen Athletics
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