VANCOUVER – It has been nearly 40 years since the University of Calgary Dinos have captured for the Canada West title, and the program has never attended the university men's soccer national championship in its history. There's some work left to do on the first, but the second is in the bag.
A penalty kick in the 77th minute lifted the Dinos to a 2-1 lead over the Mount Royal University Cougars, and they shut it down the rest of the way to win their Canada West semifinal at UBC's Thunderbird Stadium. Calgary advances to face the winner of the UBC-Saskatchewan semifinal in Saturday's conference championship game, looking to lift the trophy for the first time since 1980. And they book a trip to Montreal next week to take on the nation's best at the U SPORTS championship.
For the second week in a row, fifth-year
Mark Bohdan played the hero. He scored the Dinos' 89th-minute tally to knock off nemesis Trinity Western in the quarter-final round in Langley, and he calmly stroked the ball from the spot past the MRU 'keeper in the final 15 minutes in Vancouver to keep their season going.
"It was a local darby played in B.C. so it was always going to be competitive," said Dinos head coach
Brendan O'Connell. "It could have gone either way at one time but we were solid in the end and
Mark Bohdan our graduating player showed a bit of brilliance in the box and we got that penalty and he put it away."
After a couple of encouraging forays into Mount Royal territory the Dinos would capitalize in the 16th minute following a broken free kick.
Dondre Bailey spun from the left channel and sent in a cross which forward
Derek Brust headed in short side from 12 yards out to give Calgary the 1-0 advantage.
Just ahead of halftime, the Cougars would find the equalizer from some combination play down the left flank, leading scorer Mohamed El Gandour was threatening at the top of the 18-yard box and taken down amongst a sea of Dinos and awarded a penalty kick. Gandour would make no mistake slotting it home in the right corner past Calgary goalkeeper
Jake Ruschkowski to draw even at 1-1 just ahead of the break.
Coming out of halftime it was the Cougars who struck with back to back glorious chances both courtesy of Da Rocha but Ruschkowski in the Calgary goal was equal to the task with sensational diving stops. The first was a glancing header from 11 yards out in minute 48 which Ruschkowski punched aside with his right fist while the second was a heat seeking left footed strike from 25 yards out in the 53rd minute that was just pushed over the crossbar to keep the score deadlocked.
Coach O'Connell also praised his goalkeeper especially focusing on the athletic stop in the 48th minute.
"I've been around the game a long time and I've never seen a save like that at the back end where he pulled it out of thin air, it was amazing. That's why he's been nominated this year, he's kept the team in it pulling off world class saves like that."
It was the rubber match between the crosstown rivals, with Mount Royal taking a 5-0 win over the Dinos on the opening day of the season before Calgary returned the favour with a 1-0 decision at home on the season's final fixture.
Calgary faces either UBC or Saskatchewan for the Canada West championship Saturday night at 8 p.m. MT from Vancouver, live on CanadaWest.tv presented by Co-op.
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