KAMLOOPS – The Thompson Rivers University WolfPack men's soccer team have broken out of their slump after earning their first victory of the 2023 season with a 2-1 win over the UNBC Timberwolves in Prince George Sunday.
 
"Finally, we were able to put a full 90 minutes together both on the defensive side of the ball and offensively," said WolfPack head coach John Antulov. "I think it's a big relief for the guys to put a game together and hopefully we can build on this moving forward."
 
Harry Taylor and Jonathan Rinaldi scored the goals for TRU with the goal for Taylor being the first of his WolfPack career. Elijah Dos Santos registered an assist while Svyatik Artemenko made five saves and earned the win in his first start for the 'Pack.
 
TRU was by far more the threatening team throughout the first half of play and only a pair of great saves from Daniel Zadravec in the UNBC net kept the game tied.
 
In both the 35th and 40th minutes of play beautiful passing from TRU resulted in Alesandro Comita having a clear chance on net but both times his efforts were stymied by Zadravec.
 
TRU outshot UNBC 6-1 in the first half but the score remained 0-0 through the opening 45 minutes of play.
 
The WolfPack were finally rewarded for their efforts just five minutes into the second half. A beautifully placed corner kick from Patrick Izett found Elijah Dos Santos who guided the ball back across the face of a goal where Taylor was waiting to smash it into the back of the net.
 
Keeping the pressure on, TRU earned an insurance marker just eight minutes later.
 
Akwasi Agyekum, the most valuable player at last year's U SPORTS National Championship, went on a powerful run into the box. His cross bounced off a number of legs before falling right infront of the Kamloops kid Jonathan Rinaldi who buried it into the back of the net.

From there the WolfPack settled into the game and put up a strong defensive front. Michael Henman scored with nearly the last kick of the game for UNBC but the result was never really in doubt as TRU will be heading back to Kamloops with their first win of the year.
 
Now sitting at a record of 1-5-0, TRU will remain on the road next weekend as they get set to travel to Alberta to face the Lethbridge Pronghorns and MacEwan Griffins.
 
"For us it's just building off what we did today. I thought even Friday was a good performance but we just made bad mistakes at bad times and we were able to clear that up today," said Antulov. "Overall the weekend was pretty solid, we are starting to hopefully hit our stride and just have to build that forward going into next weekend."