BURNABY, B.C. – Redshirt sophomore defender Christian Comuzzi's first career NCAA goal lifted his Simon Fraser Red Leafs to a 1-0 triumph over Western Oregon in Saturday's Great Northwest Athletic Conference men's soccer matchup atop Burnaby Mountain.
 
SFU (7-4-0, 4-2-0) dominated, holding possession of the ball for 71 per cent of the game, and outshooting the Wolves (1-9-2, 0-6-1 GNAC) by a count of 19-3. The shots on net were 8-1 in favour of Canada's NCAA team, which also had six corner kicks to WOU's 0.
 
The breakthrough came in the 69th minute on a perfectly executed corner kick. Junior midfielder Ali Zohar put the ball into the top right side of the six-yard box, where Comuzzi timed his jump flawlessly to head it inside the right goalpost.
 
"I was proud of the guys' performance, because we had a game plan on what we wanted them to do. We wanted to have control of the game," said SFU head coach Clint Schneider. "Our guys stuck with it, were patient and we thought we could get something eventually. I'm proud them for scoring on a set piece. We work on those things and a majority of our goals have come on set pieces. I'm glad we're getting a payoff on that. Credit to Western Oregon, they made it very difficult, put a lot of numbers behind the ball, defended very well, worked really hard, and didn't make it easy for us."
 

Despite the tough WOU defence, the Red Leafs created good scoring opportunities from the opening whistle. In the 18th minute, senior forward Alan Soto nailed a hard shot off the crossbar from the top of the 18-yard box. Seven minutes later, senior midfielder Conrad Cheng crossed the ball into the middle of the penalty area where sophomore midfielder Sebastian Sjo headed a shot towards the Western Oregon net. Wolves goalkeeper Juan Suarez dove to his right to push the ball off the goalpost and back into play.
 
The save kept the game at 0-0, which was the score at halftime.

SFU continued to press, with junior forward Devin O'Hea firing a turnaround shot inside the area only to have Suarez make the save in the 57th minute.
 

While the Wolves did have some positive forays down the field on the counterattack in the second half, the Red Leafs held them to one shot in the final 45 minutes.
 
Junior goalkeeper Justyn Sandhu made one save in the SFU net to earn his fourth shutout and seventh victory of the season, while his counterpart Suarez had seven stops.
 
Cheng led the Red Leafs offence with five shots, while Soto had four, two of which were on net.
 
SFU sits in a third-place tie in the GNAC standings with 12 points, trailing Western Washington (15 points) and Northwest Nazarene (16 points). The Red Leafs will get a chance to close the gap next Thursday, when they visit Western Washington for a 4 p.m. matchup. Then on Saturday, SFU will play at Seattle Pacific at 7 p.m. The Falcons are the other team in third in the GNAC table.
 
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