After a two-season hiatus, the Capilano College Blues men's soccer team is the best in British Columbia once again.
The North Vancouver team won the 2006 B.C. Colleges Athletics Association crown on Sunday, beating the Kwantlen College Eagles 1-0 in double overtime in Kamloops.
The team features former Elphi Cougar Will Gye.
It was former Sutherland Sabre Corey Birza who netted the goal to clinch the provincial title and send the Blues to the Canadian Colleges Athletics' Association championships, which will be hosted by Langara College at the Burnaby Lake Sports Complex. The championship started Wednesday.
Capilano College opened the two-day provincial tournament with a 2-1 golden-goal victory over Malaspina's Mariners, as Birza accounted for both goals.
Not surprisingly, Birza - a former BCCAA rookie of the year - was tapped as the top forward and MVP of the tournament.
It's the first B.C. college title for Birza, who is playing in his third season with the Capilano Blues. For the past two seasons, Birza - and his Blues teammates Alan McIndoe (midfield), Zamir Janmohamed (goal) and Jeremy Boileau (midfield) - saw their team bow out to the Douglas College Royals in the championship game of the BCCAA tournament.
"For the majority of the veterans on the team, it was the third time lucky for them," said head coach Paul Dailly. "It was a huge weight off their backs. "It would have been nice to play Douglas in the final, just to get some retribution for the last couple years, but it didn't work out that way. Kwantlen was definitely a tough test for us as well. They played well against Douglas and against us in the final - at the end of the day we just got that decisive goal."
Douglas, the two-time defending provincial and national champions, fell to Kwantlen 4-3 in an opening-game shootout before losing to Malaspina 2-1 in the bronze-medal match.
It's the Blues' second B.C. title since 2000, and the fifth time the squad has brought a medal back from the tourney during that same span.
The last time the Blues made it to the national championships - in 2003 - Dailly and his assistant coach, Darren Rath, led the Blues to the Canadian title.
The Blues head into the CCAA tournament as the No. 1 seed. The second through sixth seeds, respectively, are Ontario's Algonquin College, Quebec's Champlain St. Lambert College, Grant MacEwan of Alberta, host team Langara and Atlantic region representative Mount St. Vincent's.
