The waiting is the hardest part.
And after two years on the sidelines, high school rugby returned to the Foothills for the first time since the spring of 2019 with the Holy Trinity Academy Knights and Foothills Falcons clashing to kickoff the 2022 campaign on April 27 at Knights field in Okotoks.
“It was definitely intense,” said Knights head coach Megan Schlosser. “We were supposed to play Highwood a couple of weeks ago and that game got cancelled because of the snow so it was an even more delayed start after COVID and everything.
“So the girls were so hyped up and so amped up about it and it was really intense and I’m so happy with how it went.”
Schlosser, a 2021 graduate at HTA, stepped up into the coaching role for a roster full of rookies at the high school level.
“It took a little bit more because usually the Grade 10s are our new ones with the fresh feet, but this year all of the grades are pretty much new and if they haven’t played club they’ve never played,” the coach added.
“You really see girls personalities come through when it comes to leaders, there’s quite a few girls that you can tell are born and bred leaders from the get-go. They’ve never played before, but they know how to step up when they need to.
“And then it’s really nice because we’ve got quite a few girls that do play club and they love the game so much and they have so much passion for it and really want to step up and teach these girls and ignite this love of rugby in them.”
The Knights took the opener by a 53-0 score, in the back half of a double-header featuring the Falcons and Knights boys, but the return of rugby was the biggest takeaway for all involved.
“We’ve literally started on a blank-page and only have four players out of the 27 that have played before,” said Falcons head coach Chris Isherwood. “It’s a total rebuild of the squad and we came up against a relatively experienced HTA team in the scale of having two years off.
“But I don’t think the score really reflected the effort of our team, we just need to up our aggression levels and be a second faster and we’ll be competing. But for four-fifths of the game, our girls did themselves proud.”
Given the relative inexperience of the squad, the players were very much looking forward to the contest while also not necessarily knowing what to expect.
“For some of them it was a leap in the dark,” he said. “And they fulfilled what they needed to do.”
Schlosser attributed the team’s stellar debut to the group quickly falling in love with the game and finding its footing from the jump.
“We have about six subs right now and I kept asking, ‘Who wants to come off?’ And nobody ever wanted to come off the field,” she said. “I think it was just that straight love for the game that kept everybody going.”
Lauren Bull, HTA team captain, was a standout with a strong performance from the scrum-half position with multi-sport athlete Kylie Tiedje also making an impressive debut in a new sport, the coach added.
For the Falcons, Isherwood said having a 27-player roster is encouraging on the heels of a couple seasons with rugby off the radar of many in high school athletics.
“Hopefully we’re going to, as we did when I first came to the squad with Jeff Mason eight years ago, start on page one and we make a three-year program and we build,” he said. “The bulk of them are in Grade 10 and 11 so next year and the year after we build the program, build the enthusiasm in the school and we get people to turn out and enjoy rugby.”
Building up for the season has seen the Falcons focus on ball-handling skills along with finding the right positional fits and where everyone is best situated on the pitch.
“I’ve asked the girls to reflect on the game and come back to our next training session with one thing they can improve on and one thing they did well and just build the team there and move forward,” Isherwood said.
In league action, the Falcons boys and girls host back-to-back games on May 3, against West Island College and Strathmore beginning at 5 p.m.
HTA is home to a boys and girls double-header on May 5 versus the visiting Bow Valley starting at 5 p.m.
Both the Falcons and Knights will be at the Clearwater Cup Sevens tournament at the Calgary Rugby Union on the first weekend of May.
