Luck of the Irish wasn’t required for a pair of Okotoks teams to continue their winning ways.
The Holy Trinity Academy Knights boys and Foothills Falcons girls continued their torrid start to the high school rugby season by sweeping the field at the Calgary Irish Rugby Club Icebreaker Tournament on May 6.
“Our team is developing some really good chemistry and we’re able to move the ball from player to player pretty well,” said Knights boys head coach Jason Krueger. “We’re getting better at our rucking and support and our tackling has been really good.
“That’s one of the really good things, that we’ve been improving every week and as competitions get tougher and tougher, we’re able to meet those challenges.”
Following a win over Highwood, the Knights had one of their stiffest tests of the season come down to the final play against Calgary’s Notre Dame, one of the top squads in the Division 1 ranks in the city.
“As we keep building our team chemistry, we just keep getting better and challenging better teams,” said Knights scrum-half Colton Boychuk, a Grade 11 student. “We haven’t played a team with that level of skill before, it was definitely shocking at the start.
“As the game went on we just had to play how we play and the last try was just a total team effort and brought us away with the win.”
Rhett Esler put the ball down in the try zone in the final moments to give the Knights the victory after terrific work from the HTA collective on the type of play coaches dream about.
“It’s important to note (Esler) doesn’t get that score if not for, winning a crucial line-out, we did a maul really well, Ted Tell was able to get the ball out to our backs and it got passed down the line to our last available guy, Rhett who snuck it in the corner and scored and he had to break two tackles,” Krueger said.
“It’s always nice when you see players fighting for it for a good couple of minutes and then they get that breakthrough. For me, that’s really what rugby is all about.”
The Knights went on to edge out Notre Dame’s junior squad in the final round-robin game.
The Icebreaker championship saw HTA take down familiar foe Bow Valley.
“We’ve been training for a long time, a lot longer than the other teams and we just built team chemistry really quick,” Boychuk added. “Now, we’re building it better.”
For the Falcons girls, four wins at the Icebreaker Tournament runs their undefeated start to the season to 12 games in all competitions.
“I think it’s just the chemistry between the girls,” said Falcons lock Sofia Gonevou, a Grade 12 student. “We all talk a lot, there’s a lot of commitment on the team, we all show up to practice and we all have accountability for everything.
“There’s was a lot of girls that were new so we weren’t super sure about (the season), but once we started playing, it was pretty good, we were confident.”
Foothills opened the competition by doubling up Notre Dame 10-5 before earning a pair of big shutout victories, 29-0 over St. Francis and 31-0 over Crescent Heights, to advance to the final.
“It was tough competition,” Gonevou said. “They were really good it was a lot different than these country teams out here, they had very strong players, fast runners and hard hitters, for sure.”
In the final, the Falcons grinded out a 14-5 triumph over the Notre Dame 2 squad.
“They were going hard and we had a couple of injuries,” Gonevou said. “But we pulled through.”
In Big Sky Rugby action last week, the Falcons boys picked up their first victory by downing the Croxford Cavaliers 26-17 while the Comp girls squad continued to roll with an overpowering 41-5 performance over Croxford. The Strathcona-Tweedsmuir Spartans dropped a 41-22 decision to Rundle College.
This week, the Falcons are home to the Highwood Mustangs for a double-header on May 10 at 5 p.m. with the Spartans welcoming the Banff Bears at the same time. The Knights boys and girls clash with Bow Valley once again, this iteration in Okotoks on May 11.
Okotoks rugby teams will also be lining up for tournament play this weekend with the Clearwater Cup Rugby Sevens taking place at the Calgary Rugby Union on May 12-13.
