The TRU WolfPack women’s soccer team will open the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association championship against a wild-card team from Quebec.
TRU, the Pacific Western Athletic Association champion the last two seasons, is scheduled to leave Monday for Charlottetown, where the eight-team tournament will run Nov. 7-10.
The WolfPack’s opening game is scheduled for Nov. 7, against the Ahuntsic Indiennes of Montreal. The Indiennes are a wild-card team out of the RESQ.
The game will be the first of the tournament, played at 10 a.m., Atlantic time, which is 7 o’clock Pacific time. TRU is ranked No. 3 ahead of the tournament; Ahuntsic is No. 6.
TRU actually has played this squad before — at the 2011 CCAA championship in Quebec City, the Indiennes beat the WolfPack to capture bronze.
The two-time CCAA-champion Francois-Xavier Garneau Elans, who are ranked No. 1, will open against the host Holland Hurricanes, who are ranked eighth. The No. 2 NAIT Ooks of Edmonton will play the seventh-ranked Atlantic-champion MSVU Mystics, and the Ontario-champion Humber Hawks, who are ranked No. 4, will take on the No. 5 Concordia Thunder of Alberta.
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The WolfPack’s Alanna Bekkering has been named the Pacific Western women’s soccer player of the week.
Bekkering, the conference’s player of the year, was named the MVP of the championship tournament in Squamish on the weekend. A fourth-year midfielder out of South Kamloops, Bekkering scored the game-winner in the WolfPack’s 1-0 victory over the UBC-Okanagan Heat in Saturday’s championship final.
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The WolfPack volleyball teams may be facing a packed house when they hit the road for matches Friday and Saturday.
TRU’s women and men are off to Brandon. Each team will play two matches against the host Bobcats.
Because of construction on a new gymnasium at the U of Brandon, only 400 seats are available for the matches — tickets are sold out already.
The WolfPack men are 2-0 after sweeping the Heat in a season-opening home-and-home series. The victories moved previously unranked TRU up to 10th in the CIS rankings.
TRU’s women, meanwhile, were swept on opening weekend. Brandon is 1-1.
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After a fourth-place finish in its first tournament of the Pacific Western season, the WolfPack badminton team is off to Nanaimo for another.
The WolfPack played host to the first conference tournament, on Oct. 19-21, and was fourth. This weekend’s tournament starts Friday at Vancouver Island University.
Head coach Alex Perkin has inserted Joey Chu and Louis Zixi in men’s singles, and Anica Arduini and Lacey Banman in women’s singles. Arduini and Banman will team up in doubles, and Rita Ma and Trina Drummond also will work doubles.
Chu and Noah Woods will be a doubles team, as will Johnny Nguyen and Zixi. Woods and Ma, and Patrick Lam and Lyndsey Nabata will be mixed doubles teams.
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Revenge will be on the minds of the WolfPack hockey team as it plays the Selkirk Saints at Memorial Arena on Friday.
The WolfPack will play host to the Saints on Friday, 8:30 p.m. TRU also has a game with the Eastern Washington Eagles on Saturday at 8 p.m.
TRU is 3-2 in B.C. Intercollegiate Hockey League action. Its lone losses came against the Saints in Castlegar — Selkirk won 11-0 and 8-1 on Oct. 19-20.
