Two weeks before UVic students return to campus, Centennial Stadium will come back to life on Aug. 22 as the University of Victoria men’s and women’s soccer teams open the 2025-26 Canada West season against Trinity Western University.
The women kick off at 5 p.m., followed by the men at 7:15 p.m.
After a 9-2-4 campaign 2024-25 season, including a 5-1 home record, the UVic men are looking for even more.
Fourth-year defender Fin Tugwell is expected to anchor the back three. Tugwell spent the summer with Pacific FC of the Canadian Premier League on a U Sports contract, logging four full matches and valuable experience against professional competition.
Back with the Vikes, he will again lead the back three alongside his brother Archie and Alex Moody.
“Everyone on the team is super excited,” Tugwell said. “You can feel it in the last couple weeks of preseason. We had a great preseason, scoring a lot of goals and conceding very few, but now we’ll see how it plays out against U Sports teams.”
The Canada West Defensive Player of the Year and U Sports First Team All-Canadian said the team is bracing for tough Canada West competition.
“We’re coming in with a bigger target on our back this year,” he said. “There’ll be no easy games. We just want to give it our all and hopefully start with a couple of wins to build momentum into the school year.”
Up front, former Mount Douglas standout Yassin Guitouni and last year’s leading scorer Matthew Pearse, a St. Andrew’s Regional graduate, are expected to drive the attack in a 3-5-2 formation.
The Vikes went unbeaten in preseason at 6-0, scoring 29 goals, and swept Trinity Western in two meetings last season.
The men’s 15-game regular season runs through Oct. 11, with Canada West playoffs from Oct. 24 to Nov. 1 and nationals Nov. 6-9 in Toronto.
The UVic women open their season against Trinity Western after a breakout 2024-25 campaign. They finished 9-5-5, earned Canada West silver for the first time since 2017, and returned to nationals for the first time since 2019.
For fifth-year forward Sophie Murphy, last year’s experience has set the bar higher.
“I think we’re just hungry for more,” Murphy said. “Trinity Western is a really hard team to play against, but we know them really well. I hope we just bring everything we’ve learned this past month to the surface and go at them.”
Murphy said the team’s progress comes as much from unity as skill.
“You can tell everyone’s doing it for each other, not just themselves,” she said. “Everyone has the same goal, and once we make it to nationals this year, I think we’ll go further because we want to win it.”
The women feature plenty of local talent, with 11 players from Greater Victoria and three more from elsewhere on Vancouver Island.
2024-25 leading scorer Ruby Nicholas, who was last year’s Canada West Player of the Year, returns after posting eight goals and seven assists. Murphy added four goals and two assists, forming a potent wing partnership in UVic’s 4-3-3 system.
The Vikes went 2-1 in preseason against U Sports opponents, beating McGill and Memorial.
Last season, they split two matches with Trinity Western, winning once and drawing the other.
Like the men, the women close their regular season on Oct. 11 against UBC, before Canada West playoffs, and nationals at McMaster University from Nov. 6-9.
