The York University Lions women's soccer team will battle for their first national banner in program history as they travel across the country to Victoria for the 2019 U SPORTS championships hosted by the University of Victoria from Nov. 7-10.
 
The eight-team tournament runs until Sunday, with the gold-medal final set for 3pm at Centennial Stadium. All 11 games will be webcast on usports.live.
 
The Lions will make their fifth national appearance after a 10-year hiatus, with their last four appearances taking place from 2005-07 and 2009. Their best tournament result came in 2007 when they finished as high as silver medalists, falling to the Cape Breton Capers 2-1 in their only championship final appearance. A year prior, the national championship was also hosted in Victoria and the team narrowly missed out on the podium after falling to the Ottawa Gee-Gees 2-0 in the bronze medal match.
 
After raising their first OUA banner since 2009, the Lions enter the national tournament as the top seed and will take on the silver medallists from the AUS conference, the Acadia Axewomen, who make their first tournament appearance since 1990. The two teams will open the championship with the first game of the day on Thursday morning at 10:30am PT/1:30pm ET.
 
After dropping their first game of the season to the Guelph Gryphons in late August, the Lions went on a tear going unbeaten in their last 17 games. During the regular season the Lions put up 26 goals and recorded eight clean sheets, the fourth best marks in the OUA in both categories. In the postseason the Lions were second in the OUA with an average of 0.43 goals against and picked up three clean sheets in their four games.
 
Thanks to their stellar performance in the regular season, six Lions were named OUA West first-team all-stars for the first time in program history which was highlighted by captain Teni Odetoyinbo receiving the OUA West Most Valuable Player award – the first since Nour Ghoneim won the award in back-to-back years in 2014 and 2015. First-year defender Joselyn Gagliardi and Odetoyinbo helped command a defensive line that only allowed an average 0.57 goals against all season.
 
In the midfield, 2018 OUA West Rookie of the Year Kalifornia Mitchell doubled down on last year's success and earned her second straight first-team all-star selection after finishing second on the team in scoring with three goals. Also in the midfield are second-year Vanessa Salvaggio and captain Farkhunda Muhtaj, the pair contributed five assists to the teams OUA third best 14 total assists. Making her way back on to the first team is forward Kiyani Johnson, who was the team's leading scorer and tied for second in the OUA with 11 goals, and third with 13 points on the season.
 
The team went on a dream postseason campaign that included back-to-back wins in the quarter-final and semifinal stages with both games being decided in extra-time. After dropping the Gryphons 1-0 with a goal from Jotam Chouhan in the 105^th minute, the Lions upset the former No. 1 nationally ranked 2018 OUA and U SPORTS champion Gee-Gees 3-2 in front of their home crowd en route to the OUA final. A 2-0 victory over the Toronto Varsity Blues in the championship game thanks to an own goal and a beauty finish from Lions defender Jessica Lush were more than enough to secure the program's fourth OUA banner.
 
The winner of Thursday's quarter-final will advance to the championship semifinal on Saturday at 12:30pm PT/3:30pm ET against either the RSEQ champion Montreal Carabins or the Canada West finalist UBC Thunderbirds.