BOX SCORE CALGARY –
Erica Mysko scored once and had an assist to help lead the University of Calgary Dinos to a 2-1 win over Thompson Rivers University Sunday afternoon on Senior Day from Dinosaur Field.
With the win, the Dinos sweep the season series with the WolfPack and improve to 8-4-2 overall, clinching the No. 3 spot in the Canada West Pacific Division. Two days after clinching a playoff berth, TRU maintains its positioning as the No. 4 seed in the Pacific standings and finishes the regular season with a 6-6-2 record.
On a picture-perfect fall day, the Dinos got the scoring going in the early going.
Erica Mysko forced a turnover on the wing, sending the ball to the middle of the field where
Alison Pedersen was able to turn and one-time a blast from the edge of the box low and near post to make it 1-0 in the 14th minute.
TRU nearly leveled things up just a few minutes later, when Emily Clark ripped a shot from the 18', but Calgary keeper
Katie French made a charge on the ball and covered up the rebound for one of her two saves on the afternoon.
Calgary was able to double its lead in the 26th minute. Pedersen sent a perfect through ball behind the defence for a streaking
Rachel Barlow. The national leader in assists fired a shot that was destined for the back of the net, only to see WolfPack keeper Marissa Young make an incredible diving effort and push the ball wide. Mysko followed the play on the weak side, however, and was there for the put back and her fifth goal of the year.
The score would remain the same until the second half.
After both teams saw goals disallowed on foul calls, Thompson Rivers was able to draw closer at the 77:20 mark. A looping shot into the box forced French to make a play on it. The Dinos keeper punched the ball away, before a collision just on the edge of the eight-yard box. Hawan Abdissa was there for the rebound and lobbed the ball over the strewn bodies in the box, where it bounced it into the back of the net to cut the gap to 2-1.
Calgary buckled down on defence from there, though, and saw this one out without any further damage to secure their playoff seeding.
"The win today was definitely nice," Dinos co-head coach
Alex Valerio said. "It's going to be important to try to take the good things that we did today and translating them to performances as we go into the playoffs. Tidying up a few things is also going to be a priority for us as we shift to this two-week phase of prep. We'll give the players a few days to recover and regenerate and we'll be back at it.
"Every opponent will be difficult, and we understand that. We're just going to take it one game at a time and try to keep moving forward to get where we want to be at the end of the year."
Canada West playoff seedings will be finalized late on Sunday.
-UC-
