It has been a busy couple of weeks for Trey Durham and his Cape Breton University Men’s football team, as they continued in their quest to become the best team in Canada.

Last month Durham and Cape Breton competed in the CIS men’s national championship, where they reached the semi-finals, coming just a week after they won the Subway Atlantic University Sport men’s championship.

Reaching the semis capped off a memorable season for Durham, which also included capturing his first AUS regional championship title with a 3-1 victory over Acadia University.

The success was the first time Durham’s school had won the championship since he had enrolled as a student.

The winner, as well as the runner-up in the AUS championship, both qualified to compete in the USport championship, which is the national championship of Canada.

The USport championship took place at the University of Guelph last month, and included eight of the top teams in Canada.

In the first round of the tournament, Cape Breton, the Atlantic region champions, beat Toronto 1-0, courtesy of a penalty in the 110th minute.

In the next round, the semi-final, Cape Breton faced the University of Alberta, the Canada West regional champions. In the semi-final match, Durham felt that Cape Breton had controlled the game and created the most chances, but that they did not make the most of their opportunities. Alberta, on the other hand, did capitalise on their chances and came from behind to win the game 2-1.

“The loss against Alberta hurt us deeply because we felt as if we were the better team on the day,” Durham said. “Unfortunately, football is like that, against teams such as Alberta, if you don’t take your chances they surely will.”

After losing in the semi-final, Cape Breton went into the third- place match, but they were beaten 3-0 by the host, University of Guelph.

“For a team that has many new players from all around the world, I think our accomplishments this season were outstanding,” Durham said.

“It was unfortunate about [not winning] the USport tournament, but fourth in Canada is still huge and shouldn’t be treated as a bad thing.”

In spite of not reaching the USport final, Durham enjoyed just having the opportunity to take part in both competitions.

“These tournaments were definitely the highlights of my time at Cape Breton University because I hadn’t played many games in previous seasons due to my ACL injury,” Durham said.