MacEwan Athletics
For the first time in three seasons, the MacEwan Griffins have a team in the U Sports top 10 rankings.
After a 4-0-0 start, the MacEwan Griffins women's soccer team snuck into the national rankings on Tuesday, sitting 10th in the poll.
It's the first time MacEwan has hit the rankings since the 2014-15 season when Griffins women's volleyball was ranked eighth in Canada after knocking off UBC in the opening weekend of the season.
The Griffins women's soccer program made the list for the first time in their history. They've had an honourable mention three other times – once this season and twice in 2016.
Laval (4-0-0), UOIT (7-0-0), UBC (4-1-0), Ottawa (5-1-1), Western (6-1-0), Montreal (2-0-2), Memorial (4-0-0), Queen's (4-1-1) and Cape Breton (3-0-0) placed ahead of the Griffins in this week's U Sports poll.
MacEwan, meanwhile, cracked the top 10 at cross-town rival Alberta's expense. Their 1-0 victory over the Pandas dropped the U of A (2-1-1) into the honourable mention category this week, along with fellow Canada West rivals Saskatchewan (3-1-0) and Trinity Western (2-2-0).
The latter is MacEwan's opponent on Sunday (Noon, Jasper Place Bowl). The Griffins will first host Fraser Valley (1-2-1) on Friday (Noon, Clareview Community Centre).
"The league is so tight," said Griffins head coach Dean Cordeiro. "There's a lot of parity. For us, we're treating it one game at a time. We need to be ready for Fraser Valley on Friday. We can't focus on anything else but that. It's back to the training pitch. We're going to work harder. There's always room for improvement.
"We are off to a good start," he added. "It's still early, but we want to keep this going.
"We know that where we're at, if we play like we want to play, we know we're going to be in every match. And that's exciting. We've just got to make sure we're executing and we're ready to rock and roll."
Tuesday was a great day for the Griffins on the individual front, too, as goalkeeper Emily Burns was named Canada West's female athlete of the week after she shut out Alberta and Mount Royal University last weekend. She now moves forward and is in the running for the U Sports women's athlete of the week, which will be announced on Wednesday.
Edit: Note, the original version of this article has been corrected to reflect the fact that the Griffins women's volleyball team had a U Sports top 10 nod after the opening week of the 2014-15 season.
