In a sit-down interview with The Cascade, Lowndes talked about dynamic first-year performances, recruiting, and how important it will be to match last season’s intensity.
Brazinha’s ascendence; Colebourne’s arrival
In 2022/23, Lowndes’ Cascades fell just short of the Final Four losing 2-1 after extra time to the Mount Royal Cougars. On that team though was a pesky, slight, first-year striker out of Coquitlam Metro-Ford Soccer Club by the name of Mateo Brazinha, who in a veteran heavy line-up earned regular minutes during his rookie campaign. Brazinha has of course gone on to become the program’s first U Sports men’s soccer player of the year and Cascades male athlete of the year.
What impressed Lowndes the most about Brazinha wasn’t an innate goal scoring ability (Brazinha has previously recalled he wasn’t much of a scorer), but his ability to set up plays.
“Mateo reached out to me, he’d been in contact with some other schools, and nobody had bit. I went out to watch him play and just his athleticism and eye for gold even then was evident. I was kind of surprised that nobody had picked him up.”
Like Brazinha in 2022/23, from a particularly strong rookie class in 2024/25 emerged Dante Colebourne out of Surrey United Soccer Club. Colebourne earned Cascades male rookie of the year honours and Lowndes is eager to see what not only him, but all of the second years have taken from last season’s experience.
“I’ve always been pretty clear with the messaging that if they come in and they do well in preseason and they outperform a senior player, then they’re going to play. And the returning guys know that. They know that it’s dog eat dog, and if they play well, they’re going to play.”
Need for a field on campus
Called a hotbed for youth soccer, Lowndes has readily brought in players from the Lower Mainland’s development leagues including the aforementioned Surrey United. In the 2024/25 season, the Cascades boasted a whopping 16 players from the Surrey club. Lowndes calls recruiting local talent his primary focus.
“[I] like to keep as many kids local as we can. Obviously, the only thing that’s missing right now is a field on campus. So that’s one of the stumbling blocks sometimes with things that we’re looking at.”
UFV and the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) are the only two schools in the Pacific division of Canada West without a practice field on campus. Northern Sport Centre, UNBC’s practice field, is an approximate 8-10 minute walk, or a one minute drive from campus. Bateman Park in Abbotsford isn’t necessarily far from UFV campus, but eight kms isn’t exactly walkable either.
Lowndes calls having a field on site a “huge piece” of recruiting.
“The City of Abbotsford just released that they’re trying to change the zoning of the farmland behind [campus], right? They’re looking to build future sports fields there. So, who knows, maybe we can look at that and look at some options there.”
Lowndes was speaking of a land exclusion application recently submitted by the City of Abbotsford to the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) to convert a 50-acre plot of land at King and McKenzie roads into a sports and recreation complex in the university district. On June 24 city council unanimously passed a motion to support the complex’s development.
How do they reach the summit?
The Cascades start week one with a tough pair of matches on the road against UBC and Victoria. They’re not in make or break territory just yet, but Lowndes wants his players to match the intensity they held back in 2024/25. That intensity stemmed from a poor 2023/24 — but now they need to raise their compete level yet again after the best season in program history.
“The challenge will be this year now, after having a good year, can we kick on and achieve that again, or go one step further? Because we were in that semi-final game, and you win that game — you go to nationals, so that’s the aim, how can we better that?”
