Timberwolves lose to Golden Bears soccer

The soccer Golden Bears shutout the University of Northern British Columbia Timberwolves 4-0 Saturday, maintaining their perfect season start and their top spot in the Canada West conference standings.

Despite missing an early penalty, CanWest points leader Marcus Johnstone got the Bears off the mark with his fourth goal of the season, while team captain Scott Gilroy recorded his first off a second penalty. Meanwhile, midfielders Moe Teliani and Cam Schmidt also scored either side of Gilroy to secure the result.

The Bears’ win left their opponents at the bottom of their division and gives them plenty of food for thought before their Sunday game against the University of Saskatchewan Huskies.

Timberwolves head coach Alan Alderson, however, was cautiously upbeat with his team’s performance.

“All three games that we played so far, our effort has been good,” said Alderson. “It’s just a matter of we’re a little young, we’re very inexperienced and our learning curve is steep.”

The Bears head coach Len Vickery, on the other hand, came away from the game slightly less than satisfied with his team’s overall effort. After scoring four goals in the first 46 minutes, the Bears, who scored three second half goals in each of their games last week, ran out the clock this time around to record their win.

“We were very good early on — we found a passing game that has taken our game to a slightly different level and created opportunities, but we would have liked to have followed it up with more goals because that’s what will separate the very best from the also-rans in the long run.” said Vickery

“My expectation today was that we’d keep on rolling as we did in the first half and score some goals in the second, and unfortunately that didn’t happen.”

Despite the relatively even playing field in the second half, however, Alderson had no illusions about Alberta’s quality.

“We just played one of the very best teams in the country today” said the former Alberta U-16 coach, but not without praising his own team’s performance.

“Our job is to make sure at the end of the game we can keep our heads up and give it our all, and I think we did that today.”

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