Image Credit: UNBC Athletics

By Victor Kaisar

WolfPack Soccer

WolfPack begin Canada West soccer season with split in Prince George

Aug 23, 2025 | 9:30 AM

PRINCE GEORGE — The Thompson Rivers University (TRU) WolfPack began the 2025 Canada West soccer season with a split against the UNBC Timbervolves Friday (Aug. 22) night in Prince George.

The WolfPack women cruised to a 5-0 win, which tied the record for the largest margin of victory in the program’s Canada West history.

“Yeah, obviously we’re happy with the result. Scoring goals like that is a great confidence boost,” Head Coach Mark Pennington said.

Esi Lufo led the way for TRU with two goals and an assist, while rookies Sara Kuusimäki, Nat Seiz and Laila Rafou also found the back of the net as well.

At the other end of the pitch, Floor Ursem made five stops to pick up the shutout in her WolfPack debut.

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“I’ll give credit to UNBC, although the score probably is not very flattering to them, they actually caused us some problems early on and when the game was really tight, our goalkeeper had to make a couple of saves,” Pennington added. “If she hadn’t It could have been a very different story.”

“We did a couple of things different tactically in the second half and that paid dividends, we got at them a bit more and it was great.”

In total, there were seven WolfPack rookies who saw the pitch Friday evening, and Pennington said he’s looking forward to seeing what they can bring to the team.

“We’re really excited to see them have a real impact, you know, week one, and hopefully they can grow from the confidence of that and kick on moving throughout the season,” he said.

Elsewhere, it was a difficult showing for the TRU men’s soccer team as they fell 2-1 to the Timberwolves Friday night in Prince George.

Abdel Coulibaly, who was TRU’s leading scorer last season, struck just seven minutes into the game. TRU held that lead for most of the first half before Koss Nystedt in the 43rd minute and Jamie Wildash-Chan right before the halftime whistle scored to give the Timberwolves a lead they would not relinquish.

UNBC’s Logan Pierce, who played for Kamloops United in League1 BC, made five saves to help his team pick up the win.

“I thought our guys played really well and battled hard,” WolfPack Head Coach John Antulov said. “We probably could have been up two or three goals in the first half before having a little bit of a letdown at the end.”

“We battled back in the second half and overall I was really happy with the effort from the guys.”

The WolfPack featured five debutants, one of whom was Amir Ghasemi who assisted Coulibaly’s goal.

“All the guys making their debuts acquitted themselves well in their first game,” Antulov added.

The two teams will be back in action this Sunday (Aug. 24) afternoon with the women’s game scheduled for 12 noon and the men to follow at 2:30 p.m.