The Centennial Centaurs senior girls soccer team will play for the BC AAA championship this morning at the University of British Columbia’s Thunderbird Stadium.
They’ll face Surrey’s Fleetwood Park Dragons.
Centennial reached its first final since 2001 by defeating the Reynolds Roadrunners, 2-0, in Thursday afternoon’s semi-final. Raegan Mackenzie scored both of the Centaurs’ goals against the Vancouver Island champions.
They reached the final after a dramatic penalty kick shootout against the R.A. MacMath Wildcats from Richmond after both teams finished tied atop their pool with identical records of two wins and a draw. That draw was a 0-0 deadlock in Wednesday’s second round when Centennial dominated the run of play but couldn’t solve Wildcats’ keeper Makayla Kusch.
But it was team captain Danae Robillard who fired the decisive goal in the Centaurs’ 3-2 win in the penalty kick shootout to determine which team would advance to Thursday afternoon’s semi-final.
Against Reynolds, Mackenzie opened the scoring on a penalty kick in the first half and she then sealed it with a header into the back of the net late in the match. Centennial fired 26 shots at the Roadrunners’ net, while allowing only four.
Fleetwood Park, who will be playing in the final for the fifth consecutive year, needed their own heartstopping heroics to get there as they went to penalty kicks in their semi-final against the South Delta Sun Devils.
The Dragons finished second in last year’s championship. The Centaurs were third. Centennial last won the provincial title in 2000, when they defeated North Vancouver's Argyle Pipers.
Game time at UBC’s Thunderbird Stadium is 11:45 a.m.
