Vancouver Rise wins first Northern Super League title after 2-1 win over AFC Toronto

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History was made at Toronto’s BMO Field on Saturday as the Vancouver Rise edged AFC Toronto to be crowned the very first champions in Northern Super League history.

An own goal from Toronto goalkeeper Sierra Cota-Yarde and a 68^th-minute winner from Holly Ward capped a 2-1 come-from-behind victory for Vancouver, which finished the regular season 12 points back of first-place Toronto, and only reached the final with a penalty-shootout victory over Ottawa Rapid last weekend.

In front of a crowd of 12,429, Vancouver captain Samantha Chang became the first player to hoist the Diana B. Matheson Cup, as her team reigned supreme following the inaugural season of Canada’s first professional women’s soccer league.

The Vancouver Rise were made to work for their win, falling behind to a Kaylee Hunter goal in the 20^th minute, and then waiting out a 30-minute weather delay as the stadium bowl was cleared for safety because of lightning in the area.

NSL final brings inaugural season of women’s pro soccer to a close, with eyes to the future

“The first half was not great,” admitted Chang afterwards. “But the rain delay honestly gave us a moment to just reconnect with each other, figure out what we needed to do moving forward, and we did that.”

It was a homecoming of sorts for two of the stars of the game. For goalkeeper Morgan McAslan, of nearby Waterdown, Ont., who made seven saves on her way to being named the game’s most valuable player, and Chang, from Mississauga, the game was very much a family affair.

“To win a final at BMO, where we both grew up coming to games when we were younger, that’s such a special moment for us,” Chang said. “And we’ll remember that forever.”

For Toronto, it was a game of what could have been. Despite out-chancing Vancouver 16-8 to with an 8-3 edge in shots on target, the play of both McAslan and Toronto’s profligacy put paid to its hopes of lifting the trophy in front of their fans. 

“That’s what it comes down to,” said AFC Toronto head coach Marko Milanovic after seeing his team lose for the third time in three games at BMO Field this season. “I think if we convert even 30 per cent of what we created this game looks very different right now, and the result would have been different. So, yeah, that’s definitely frustrating.”

While there was the overriding sense of a vision coming to life with the staging of this game – a dream that former Canadian international Diana Matheson and her co-founders had after she hung up her boots in 2021 – the event was also rich with that eternal currency of sports – hope.

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With the eyes of the Canadian soccer world on BMO Field for the week – a small preview of how the summer of 2026 will go – government dignitaries assembled before the game to announce the investment of $5.45-million in the NSL to upgrade facilities. That had been one of the key factors that Matheson had talked about in the lead-up to the game as something that would prevent women’s soccer from continuing to grow in Canada.

“The biggest gap right now in soccer in Canada is that of infrastructure,” she said. “When we compare ourselves to countries like us in soccer, like Denmark, Australia, they all have a mid-size soccer stadium for every half-million people in population. And in Canada, we have one for every 8 million people. So the stadiums we want to play in don’t exist.”

That money will help in league and sport’s future, but the present was very much on display Saturday. And nowhere was in more in clear view than in the shape of Hunter, AFC Toronto’s 17-year-old striker.

The team’s leading regular-season scorer – with 15 goals – terrorized the Vancouver defence throughout, and could easily have had a first-half hat trick. As it was, she had to make do with just the one, a well-taken goal that she struck through the legs of Rise goalkeeper Morgan McAslan with 19 minutes elapsed on the clock.

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Before that, Hunter could have opened the scoring within the first 10 minutes, volleying wide on a cross from captain Emma Regan. And she rounded out the first half by breaking in down the left, but her shot only found the side netting.

In between those chances of course, the game went through a half-hour weather delay, when players and coaches left the field and the fans were asked to retreat to the BMO Field concourses with lightning detected within 10 kilometres of the area. Following on from last Sunday’s men’s Canadian Premier League final – which had its own weather delay when the game was stopped to clear the pitch of snow – Mother Nature is becoming every bit as much of a star turn as the players themselves.

Vancouver almost found their way back into the game shortly after halftime, but while Toronto goalkeeper Sierra Cota-Yarde was unable to hold Lisa Pechersky’s shot, Latifah Abdu was unable to reach the rebound.

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If Cota-Yarde, who represents Portugal internationally, got out of jail in that moment, the finger of blame would be pointed squarely at her just seconds later. Nicole Stanton, who had replaced injured Canadian international Quinn in the first half, took a 54-minute corner kick, and when it sailed through to Cota-Yarde at the near post, the goalkeeper could only fumble it into her own net.

Despite the calamity, her captain wasn’t about to apportion blame after the game.

“I said before the game, we win and we lose as a team,” an emotional Regan said afterwards. “And I think for me, it’s never on any one person. We play a team sport for a reason.”

Things would get worse for Cota-Yarde and Toronto with a little more than 20 minutes to play. Chang played an inviting ball down the left channel, and Ward – who earlier this year became the first NSL player to score for the Canadian national team – shrugged off the challenge from Zoe Burns before steering a shot into the far corner for what ultimately stood up as the championship winner.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the name of the Northern Super League in the headline and third photo caption.