Trinity Western senior defender Liz Hicks helped lift her Spartans to the U SPORTS national final but was unable to secure an elusive national title in her final university game Sunday in Sydney, NS. (Photo by Mark Janzen property of Trinity Western athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Soccer

Spartans’ run to a sixth U SPORTS women’s soccer title scuttled as Trinity Western falls to MacEwan Griffins in national title game’s penalty-kick portion!

In its 17 prior contests this season, comprising Canada West league matches and playoffs, as well as U SPORTS national championship ones, the Trinity Western Spartans women’s soccer team’s 16-0-1 record showed both an aptitude and an ability to succeed at whatever kind of adversity had been placed in front of them, from injuries to […]

Trinity Western Spartans' fifth-year standout defender Liz Hicks during a Tuesday evening training session at Cape Breton University in Sydney, NS, site of the 2021 U SPORTS Women's Soccer Championships. (Photo by Mark Janzen property of Trinity Western athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Soccer

Have goal, will travel: Trinity Western’s 26-hour marathon trip to U SPORTS soccer nationals in Nova Scotia mirrors Spartans’ own game-day resiliency along their journey!

Coming off 2020’s cancelled season and into a new one in which the norm has been to expect the unexpected, its perhaps no surprise to learn that despite a cross-country flight filled with folly, that the Canada West women’s soccer champions from Trinity Western University have arrived in Nova Scotia, stirringly unshaken, to battle for […]

They first met in 1993 at Trinity Western when Rob Giesbrecht (right) was a third-year player and Graham Roxburgh a first-year men's assistant coach. Twenty-eight years later, their friendship endures as the pair reunite for the 2021 Canada West season. (Photo by Scott Stewart property of Trinity Western athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Men's Soccer

TWU women’s soccer 2021: Seventeen years after an historic run to 2004 national title, Giesbrecht, Roxburgh re-unite Friday on Chase Field sidelines as Spartans open new season!

LANGLEY — Graham Roxburgh and Rob Giesbrecht first met on the practice pitch at Trinity Western University more than a quarter-century ago.And ever since crossing paths in their early 20’s, they’ve not only worked together, they’ve just spent the past decade scheming against each other.Along their parallel journeys, the pair formed a bond as soccer […]

Mila van der Veen (centre) of the Trinity Western Spartans makes a run past UBC's Josie Claypool (left) and Katalin Tolnai on Monday as the U SPORTS women's soccer season resumed play with an exhibition match in Langley. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of Varsity Letters 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Girls Soccer University Women's Soccer

Trinity Western-UBC women’s soccer: “It’s in the blood of the two schools…” True words as third decade of dynastic rivalry opens with 3-3 draw!

LANGLEY — You could say it was a pretty quiet day for the resumption of the greatest rivalry game in the history of U Sports’ women’s soccer.An early-week 5 p.m. start on a day which began with some drizzle, on a campus still weeks from the opening of classes, accompanied by the calendar’s earliest-ever clash […]

She got the ball rolling! Trinity Western's 2004 national championship-winning captain Angela Trauter provides the roots of a Spartans' tree filled with talented midfielders. The youth of the 2020 group has much to glean from its past. (Photo by Scott Stewart property of Trinity Western athletics 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Soccer

Happy 20th birthday: At the heart of the park, a youthful Trinity Western women’s midfield has much to glean from its stellar past

LANGLEY — So what’s the commonality that best defines the Trinity Western Spartans’ voluminous streak of 16 straight appearances and counting in the Canada West women’s soccer Final Four championships?As in any kind of anatomical analysis, figurative as this one may be, the place to start is at the heart, or in the case of […]

This week, the Varsity Letters podcasts welcomes three guests to chat about the Canada West's cancelled fall season.
Feature Podcast

06.09.20 edition: Varsity Letters – The Podcast examines the ramifications of Canada West’s cancelled fall season!

NORTH DELTA — Welcome back to Varsity Letters – The Podcast for June 9, 2020. Big news this week in the world of Canadian university sports means we’ll welcome three guests to the pod this week! Joining us will be UBC Director of Athletics Kavie Toor, longtime Trinity Wester University head women’s soccer coach Graham […]

There is still hope that players like Fraser Valley Cascades' rising second-year forward Katie Lampen (right) and the rest of the B.C.-based teams in the Canada West women's and men's soccer worlds will be able to play meaningful exhibitions later this fall, if the environment is deemed safe by provincial health, as well as university authorities. (Photo by Dan Kinvig property of University of the Fraser Valley athletics 2019. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Football University Women's Soccer

Despite a cancelled fall season, B.C.’s Canada West schools keep alive hopes of meaningful inter-province competition!

The Canada West’s fall sports season may have been officially cancelled Monday due to the COVID-19 pandemic, yet some coaches and administrators from the conference’s B.C.-member schools seemed united in their hopeful belief that with a continued flattening of the curve throughout the summer months and all the appropriate green lights flashing, that its core […]

Trinity Western's fourth-year defender Kristen Sakaki (left) had her love affair with the beautiful game reaffirmed during the Spartans' 12-day training camp in England last month. (Photo by Scott Stewart property of Trinity Western athletics 2019. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Soccer

TWU women’s soccer: On eve of 2019 season opener, training camp in England reminds Spartans of their “love and joy” for the beautiful game

LANGLEY — It wasn’t a trip planned specifically as a soccer pilgrimage.Training camps are serious business, and when you’ve played in five of the last seven U Sports national title games like the women’s team from Langley’s Trinity Western University have, it’s pretty clear that no part of the process can be ignored.Yet allowing that […]

With her Spartans' teammates Aliya Coy (centre) and Kat Chin (8) at her side, Trinity Western's U Sports Player of the Year Seina Kashima shows her emotion after scoring the goal which knotted the national final against host Ottawa at 1-1. (Photo by Scott Stewart property of TWU athletics)
Feature University Women's Soccer

TWU women’s soccer: Plethora of early chances go unanswered, Spartans drop a U Sports title-tilt heartbreaker to Gee-Gees

The Trinity Western Spartans needed 11th-hour heroics in the nation’s capital the day before just to book safe passage to Sunday’s 2018 U Sports national women’s soccer championship final game. Yet in sharp contrast, when the Remembrance Day title tilt kicked off against the host Gee-Gees on the campus of the University of Ottawa, Langley’s Spartans […]

Aliya Coy has been a stalwart along the Spartans' back-line for both of her two seasons with the Spartans. (Photo by Scott Stewart property of TWU athletics)
Feature University Women's Soccer

Canada West Final Four at TWU: After putting soccer first on her menu, Spartans’ Aliya Coy finds a new joy for the game

LANGLEY — There is an old saying about how we are all essentially defined by our own unique ingredients. Aliya Coy thought she had a pretty solid grasp of that concept when she graduated from Calgary’s Centennial High back in the spring of 2017.