Rugby Preseason Fun

17 February 2024Inara W, Hope ‘24

This past weekend, the Brentwood Girls Rugby team embarked on a trip to Starlight Stadium in Langford for a scrimmage with Shawnigan Lake School and Queen Margaret’s School and a tour of the Rugby Canada facilities.

The afternoon started with a tour of the Rugby Canada building, an amazing training facility for Canada’s national rugby teams. Our tour was given by one of the coaches for the women’s National 7s team, Jack Hanratty, and we were taken through the physical therapy rooms, the classrooms where strategy and review happen and, finally, the gym room. The gym room was massive, with about 20 fully stocked racks. While we were touring, Jack was talking about the teams’ recent experience in Perth, Australia for the World Sevens Series, and also about the upcoming tournament in Vancouver on February, 23-25.

When the tour was over, the coaches told us to get our cleats on and warm up. All of us broke into our school groups naturally, but when warm-up was over, they announced that we were splitting into four teams, two junior, and two senior, and that the teams would be mixed from every school. It was a fun experience to be able to play with girls from other schools when you spent so long thinking of them as rivals.

Both of the senior and junior teams played amazingly. And for some players, it was their first real game. Watching the junior game from the sidelines, Tatum L, Hope ‘24 said that it looked like some of these girls had playing for longer than she had.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, and the games wrapped up, we were introduced to some of the players on the national team. They talked about their experiences playing post-secondary, and how they ended up playing for Canada. After that, all the teams joined together for dinner, as per rugby tradition.

On the bus ride back to Brentwood, Mr Cowie, a longtime Brentwood teacher and one of our coaches told us how well we played and how he is “So excited” for the competitive season.

I wanted to thank Mr Cowie, Dave and Mandy for making this trip happen for us, and Shawnigan and QMS and their respective coaches for coming out to have a really fun afternoon.

Inara W, Hope ‘24

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