While their offence seems to have found its footing with a combined nine goals over a pair of victories, the defence continues to shut the door with five consecutive shutouts.
Add it all up and the Trinity Western Spartans have won five in a row, outscoring their foes a combined 15-0 in that span.
The two most recent victories were 4-0 and 5-0, respectively, over the UBC Okanagan Heat and Thompson Rivers WolfPack last Friday and Saturday. Both games were at TWU’s Chase Office Field.
Seina Kashima — the Canada West third star of the week — scored twice and added an assist in the second game.
“I think defending starts from the front; it’s not just the back four,” said Spartans coach Graham Roxburgh. “The back four is obviously getting to know each other a little bit better, but defending starts from the front three.
“Seina scored two wonderful goals but if you ask me what pleased me the most, it was her work rate to win the ball back and her work rate to put the defenders under pressure.”
The coach was also impressed with the play of fellow forwards Rachel Hutchinson — who had one goal — and Kathryn Harvey.
Amy Gartke and Danae Derksen had the other Spartan goals while Christina Oliverio didn’t have to make any saves in earning the clean sheet.
Against the Heat the day before, TWU scored three times in the first half en route to the 4-0 win.
Harvey, Kathleen Chin, Hutchinson and Leanne Verhoeff had the goals while Rachel Sydor stopped three shots for the shutout.
The Spartans improved to 6-2-0 on the Canada West season heading into this weekend’s home-and-home with the UFV Cascades (4-2-2). The teams play in Langley on Friday and then in Abbotsford on Sunday afternoon.
The TWU men’s team also faces their UFV counterparts on those same days.
The Spartans are coming off a rough weekend which saw them lose a one-goal game and then blow a three-goal lead to settle for a draw.
The first was a 1-0 defeat to UBC Okanagan in Kelowna while the second was a 3-3 draw in Kamloops against Thompson Rivers and the Spartans sit at 5-3-4 with four Canada West regular season games remaining.
“Obviously we’re disappointed with the result and I think we should have got more, but we didn’t,” said coach Mike Shearon. “We did a good job of taking the chances that we did have in the first half (and) I thought we were solid defensively in the first bit and did a good job.
“In the second half, we matched their intensity and got a good third goal. Then, we gave away three goals. Credit to TRU for not giving up and playing until the end.”
Josh Hardy and Joel Waterman had TWU up at the half and Matthew Roxburgh made it 3-0 in the 74th minute. But two minutes later, Mitchell Popadynetz got the WolfPack on the board with a penalty kick goal. He added his second just before the 90th minute before Justin Donaldson knotted things up in stoppage time.
The Heat’s Jeevin Kang scored Saturday’s only goal in the 70th minute.
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