The Burnaby North Secondary School Vikings girls rugby team were at the provincials in Tier 2 for the second year in a row, and this year took fifth spot - despite being a really young team.
They lost their first game to the eventual provincial champions, Abbotford’s W.J. Mouat Secondary, but won the next two against Prince George and Penticton.
The girls played their first game short-staffed, explained coach Ian Trevor, as several Grade 12 girls were at a graduation ceremony. The end result was a 61-7 loss to W.J. Mouat.
“The girls battled hard but we were making gaps and they were wearing us down,” Trevor said of the game they played with four missing starters.
But the Grade 12 girls, after their grad event was over, hopped on bus at 10 p.m. in Coquitlam and arrived in Williams Lake at 5 a.m. They got a few hours of shuteye and then were on the pitch at 10 a.m. to face Prince George.
“At full strength, we definitely had a much stronger effort – they couldn’t keep up with us,” Trevor said. They beat Prince George 66-7.
Their third game was a seesaw battle, but they were able to keep up the fight and beat Penticton 25-5.
“It was a very emotional game because they knew it was their last one,” Trevor said of the graduating players.
The Burnaby North team finished fourth at the last year’s Tier 2 provincials, but they lost half a dozen quality players. Trevor didn’t expect them to qualify this year because of that loss, but the team proved him wrong, beating North Vancouver’s Argyle Secondary to qualify for the provincials.
“They’ve laid down a marker for next year – this is the first time we’ve qualified for provincials two years in a row,” Trevor said.
Trevor was coaching his son’s rugby team at Burnaby North about seven years ago when a girl joined the team. But she didn’t really enjoy playing with the boys, so Trevor asked her: “Do you have 14 friends?” That was the revival of girls rugby at Burnaby North, which had been dormant for about a decade.
“It’s been a pleasure to watch it grow,” Trevor said.
The team draws on students from Grade 8 to 12, and there is a lot of bonding and good friendships between younger and older students, Trevor said, making it a very inclusive team. “There’s a lot of peer coaching that takes place.”
The team is very young, explained their teacher-sponsor, Jennifer Oatway, with only six Grade 12 students out of a team of 22 and a large contingent of Grade 8s and 9s.
“In rugby, there’s a position for every size,” Oatway said. “The sport definitely allows for different strengths and different ages.”
