Soccer Capers off to AUS championships
October 31, 2013
Cape Breton University soccer teams are gearing up for this weekend's Atlantic University Sport championships.
The fifth-place men's Capers will face off in a quarter-final match against St. Francis Xavier University at Huskies Stadium in Halifax at 3 p.m. on Friday.
The winner will advance to a semifinal game Saturday against either host Saint Mary's University or the University of New Brunswick. Semifinal winners will then advance to the championship final to be played Sunday at 2 p.m.
"We played St. FX twice now this year and we tied them both games, both good games," said Capers men's head coach Robbie Chiasson. "We're pretty close in the standings, too, so I don't know if there will be a clear-cut favourite. Hopefully, we can draw on some experience from past championships."
The Capers men's soccer club enters the AUS conference as defending champions. They have won the AUS banner three times — 2012, 2009 and 2007.
In addition, they took home a Canadian Interuniversity Sport bronze medal in 2011 and a silver medal in 2012.
UNB will host the CIS men's soccer championship this year, and has an automatic berth to the tournament. A second AUS men's team will also punch a ticket to nationals, taking place Nov. 7-10 in Fredericton, N.B.
"We had a lot of new players this season, so there's a learning curve there," said Chiasson. "We had to build throughout the season and work toward getting a result each game and toward the end of the year, I think, we kept getting better and better."
Meanwhile, the first-place, undefeated women's Capers will play Saturday in an AUS semifinal match at 11 a.m. at Rocky Stone Field in Moncton, N.B. The team that will play CBU will depend on the winners of Friday's quarter-finals.
The women's team has six AUS banners under its belt, including a 2010 title, and four consecutive banners from 2005-08. They also won CBU's first and only CIS gold medal in 2007, when CBU hosted the tournament in New Waterford.
Last year, the host No. 1 seed Capers were defeated 3-1 by the Dalhousie Tigers in the championship final.
"We've faced all these teams before," said Capers head coach Stephen (Ness) Timmons. "We're just going to try to play our game, we're going to work to our strengths. We will know who we are playing Friday night and we may make some small adjustments."
Timmons said the women's team brings a polished counterattack to the playoffs and a disciplined defence.
"We break out fast and we have a lot of speed up front," he said.
Only the winner of the women's AUS banner will advance to this year's CIS championship, hosted by the University of Toronto in Toronto, Nov. 7-10