BURNABY, B.C. – Conrad Cheng and Bjorn Borren scored goals in the first 12 minutes to lead the Simon Fraser men's soccer team to a 2-0 win over the visiting Saint Martin's Saints Saturday night in Burnaby, B.C.
 
With the win, SFU (8-5-0, 5-2-0 GNAC) now has 15 points in league play, tied with Western Washington. Both teams are two points ahead of Seattle Pacific, which has a game in hand.
 
Simon Fraser has now won four matches in a row without surrendering a goal. Saturday's result caps off an unusual week for the squad. Its Thursday home game against Northwest Nazarene (Idaho) was stopped just before halftime because of heavy fog. The teams then played a full match on Friday afternoon, before Saturday night's matchup.
 
"I'm so incredibly proud of our group," remarked SFU head coach Clint Schneider. "It is very difficult to do back-to-back games, and we asked them to do essentially three. I commend our guys, I commend our energy, I commend our mentality. It's been a difficult season and it's taken some time for us to get our legs underneath us.
 
I'm excited about our group. We have, I believe, a very special group. They can go a long way if we have everybody available. We're starting to feel like we do now, which is great. First-class performance tonight. All credit to Saint Martin's because they didn't make it easy. They're well-coached, and they played really well today. I'm very proud of our guys."
 
Cheng, a junior forward, got SFU on the scoreboard in the first minute with his second goal of the season. He took a pass from freshman midfielder Justus Meier inside the SMU half. Cheng dribbled about 20 yards, passing one defender, before making his way into the middle of the penalty area where he faked out another. Cheng then fired a point-blank shot high into the left side of the net.
 

In the 12th minute, an SMU pass back into its own penalty area wrong-footed a defender. Borren, a junior midfielder/forward, stole the ball, dribbled in and used his left foot to knock the ball past the Saints' goalkeeper for his first goal of 2021.
 
The two tallies were more than enough for SFU to clinch the win as the team dominated the run of play.
 
The team got excellent chances in the second half as well.
 
In the 62nd minute, Brody Thomas headed a Niko Papakyriakopoulos cross down to the turf and off the left goal post.
 
With about three minutes left in the match, sophomore midfielder Mark Talisuna stepped into a shot at the top of the 18-yard box but was turned aside by SMU goalkeeper Hunter Askland, who dove left to make an outstanding save.
 

In total, SFU had a 13-5 advantage in shots, and a 5-1 edge in shots on goal.
 
Senior SFU goalkeeper Aidan Bain made one save for his seventh shutout of the campaign, and fourth in a row.
 
Bain and his teammates will get a chance to play Seattle Pacific in a battle for first place next Thursday on the road, before travelling to Montana State Billings for a Saturday afternoon contest.
 
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