The Huskies men’s and women’s soccer coaches had an early look this past weekend at how their players might compete on the road.

The men’s team travelled to Toronto while the women’s team was in Edmonton for preseason action.

The men went 3-0 after defeating the University of Toronto, Ryerson University and ANB Futbol Academy.

Against Toronto, two goals from Jerson Barandica-Hamilton and one from Bobbi Nicholat, secured a 3-1 victory.

The victory is even more impressive considering Toronto’s fourth place finish in the Canadian Interuniversity Sport playoffs last year, though the Huskies men’s head coach Bryce Chapman admits that Toronto was “missing a couple players.”

The Dogs then defeated Ryerson and ANB 2-0 in their remaining two games.

“ANB is an under-21 team. They’re very good but just not as physically strong [as our usual competition],” said Chapman. “We played all of our first years and they did well. A lot of our veterans didn’t play at all.”

Nicholat, a rookie from Evan Hardy in Saskatoon, arguably had the most success in the tournament.

“Nicholat fell ill with mono in July, so he came into camp a little behind, but this Toronto trip was a coming out party for him. He scored two goals in three games.”

The women also found themselves successful on the weekend after facing some unfamiliar foes.

They beat University of British Columbia Okanagan 4-1 and Mount Royal University 5-0 but lost to Northern Alberta Institute of Technology 4-0. None of the three teams are members of the CIS.

“I played the rookies in our first game against NAIT. They were a little overwhelmed and didn’t perform as well as I would have liked,” said the Huskies women’s head coach Tom LaPointe. “But overall, we were very pleased with the weekend.”

Backup goaltender Marissa Struik played all three games due to an injury to starter Marissa Wilford.

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photo: Ivan Tam

correction: In an earlier version of this article, we named former starting goaltender Alicia Middlebrook as the current starting goaltender.