Game Report: Swangard Showdown

Swangard Stadium was an action hotspot this weekend! The ladies are truly becoming comeback masters and our men are continuing to try and find their rhythm. We touched base with a few players to get the scoop on how the games went down.

WOMEN’S GAME

The ladies did it again - after being down 2-0, they fought hard, tied it up and secured a point.

Ava Alexander scored the first of the goals just before the halftime whistle. “There wasn’t much lead up to the goal. I took the ball off the keeper in her box. We were down 2-0 but we came together pretty well to come back and tie it.” Alexander is a returning player from last year. This weekend’s game was her third match back with the team after finishing her spring semester at UBC. “I’m excited for another season with the girls. There are lots of new players this year.”

The second goal was scored in the 77th minute by stand-out 17-year-old Victoria Cronkhite. “Ava gave me a through ball inside the 18 and I was about to get around the keeper when she took me out and I got a PK that I buried in the bottom left corner,” Cronkhite explained.

With that, their tie was secured.

Ava Alexander

MEN’S GAME

“It was a tough game, we weren't on their level [today],” Suka Behery commented. The men lost 6-1 against TSS, who just played Valour FC, a Canadian Premier League team, in the preliminary round of the 2025 TELUS Canadian Championship. TSS famously won 3-1 against Valour in the first round of the 2023 championship. Last year’s Nanaimo United keeper, Callum Weir, currently plays for TSS and was their starting keeper for the game. He was named the CanPL.ca Player of the Match. 

At the 31 minute mark, a foul in TSS’s box resulted in a penalty kick for Nanaimo. At that point, the men were down 3-0. Suka Behery was the player tasked with taking the shot and he saw this as an opportunity to get the men hyped and back in the match. “Unfortunately it didn't give us the momentum I thought it might give us,” he noted after the game.

Current starting keeper, Marko Ilich.

STAY TUNED

Unity FC is coming to town! The squads are back in red next weekend and will be waiting for you at the Q’unq’inuqwstuxw Stadium. Be sure to check the League1 app or the League1 calendar for the exact start times. There will be three food truck options this week: the Funky Lemon Shack, One Cool Cookie, and the Pepper Pot.

Huge shout-out to RLR Lawyers, our lead club sponsors - their name was looking snappy on our new away jerseys! And great to see Junk in our Trunk, our practice kit sponsors, profiled on all our training kit during practices! Both of them are fantastic local businesses and have been instrumental in the foundation of our club.

Buy tickets here. 

United!