Rugby squads prepared to try their best

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This article was published 31/05/2019 (2420 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On the boys’ side of the high school rugby provincial championship this weekend, Brandon’s Vincent Massey Vikings and Crocus Plainsmen will be trying to end a Winnipeg stranglehold on the title.

On the girls’ side, the Minnedosa Chancellors and Dauphin Clippers will be trying to bring the championship home to Westman for the third year in a row.

The provincial boys’ championship begins in Winnipeg this evening as Crocus faces the five-time defending champion St. Paul’s Crusaders, who have won 10 of the 16 crowns since the provincial tournament began in 2003. The game begins at 6:30 p.m.

Plainsmen coach Sean Erickson said his team is embracing the underdog role against St. Paul’s, an all-boys private school that beat them 46-0 in the final a year ago. He has a healthy respect for his opponent.

“I don’t know if they’re going to be the same team as they were last year against us, but we’re going to play them like they are,” Erickson said. “They’re going to have skill and they’re going to have size. My boys know that, and they know that they’re going to have to play hard and hope for the best.”

The provincial format is simple, at least in theory. The Westman High School Rugby champion plays the Winnipeg runner-up, and the Winnipeg champ plays the Westman runner-up, but Massey unexpectedly found its path to the final a whole lot easier.

Sisler was the runner-up in the Winnipeg league, but was unable to field a team after suffering injuries in the playoffs. Selkirk was offered the spot, but was also too banged up to play.

As a result, Massey will face the winner of the Crocus-St. Paul’s game on Saturday afternoon in the final after playing a friendly against a combined Sisler-Selkirk roster on Friday. Massey may have some Crocus reserves in their lineup to give them a chance to see the field while limiting the minutes for Vikings starters.

Massey coach Dan Smith acknowledged it’s an unusual schedule, but said he wants his team to have fun whether they meet their crosstown Crocus rivals in the final or the heavy favourites in St. Paul’s.

“I certainly want them to enjoy themselves,” Smith said. “And I want them to compete as well as they can. It seems like the kids at the start of the season were making lots of mistakes and taking penalties and maybe just learning the rules again because there are always new players. You hope that by the end of the season they keep mistakes and the penalties to a minimum because it just shoots you in the foot, and if you want to beat St. Paul’s, you almost have to play a perfect game.”

The Vikings ended a four-year WHSR championship run by the visiting Plainsmen last weekend, winning the league title with a 32-15 victory.

Smith said it’s a been a good season for his team, which has also benefited from the experience of Frederik Pretorius and Payton Teneycke at national camps.

“We didn’t have that many graduating students from last year’s team to this year’s team but the kids who really, really make rugby a priority are the kids that go to these national development camps and learn some elite skills and that makes our team better because the style that these national teams want to play, they almost force it onto our high school kids and that makes them better,” he said. “It’s surprising how much we’ve gotten compared to last year.”

A Westman team last won the boys’ provincial championship in 2013 when the Souris Sabres emerged victorious. The Vikings earned a title in 2006.

Erickson said that he and Crocus co-coach Brent Allum went into the season wondering if they would be rebuilding, and instead saw qualities in the team that surprised them. He said the speed they play the game at and their pressure defence are important attributes that he noticed most early in the season.

They’ll need both against St. Paul’s.

“The conversation we’ve had with the group is that it’s back to the way it used to be,” Erickson said. “A lot of our success was when we were the underdogs. These last couple of years we were the target, and what’s nice is that it’s now just us out there playing our game. Our hope is that the boys get hungry and want to compete.”

Meanwhile, Minnedosa coach Kat Muirhead knows that her team heads into the competition with a target on their backs as two-time champions, but said her team embraces the pressure.

“We fully expect that,” Muirhead said. “The girls know that but this is the goal they set, and target or no target, they know what’s ahead of them and what work they need to do to get it done.”

Minnedosa was supposed to play Springfield, but with a small roster to start with and a few injuries suffered in the final, it couldn’t field a team, so third-place Kelvin stepped up. Dauphin will meet the Winnipeg champion, Sisler.

“Sisler is a bit of an unknown,” Muirhead said. “They always have a good program because they’ve been at provincials for a few years but even last year Dauphin beat them quite easily. I have an idea about Kelvin — I actually know the coach — but we don’t take that granted. You just assume that you need to work. I like to head into any game like that.”

The Chancellors girls team won their third WHSR championship in a row when they dropped the top-seeded Clippers, also for the third year in a row, 27-7 in the final a week ago.

Minnedosa and Dauphin met in the provincial final a year ago as well, with the Chancellors earning a 29-7 victory for their second provincial title in a row and in program history.

If there’s something scary for Minnedosa’s opponents to consider, it’s the fact that Muirhead thinks her group is peaking at the right time after they actually lost a league game this season, 32-31 to Dauphin on May 3.

“When we played Souris in the semi and then Dauphin in the final, we actually were getting better,” Muirhead said. “We had a few games during the season where they just didn’t play to their potential. Everybody has bad games and we try to tell them that, and sometimes they worry about taking penalties, but you take them in any game. That’s part of the game. We’ve seen in those last couple of games more flow. People are stepping it up to where they should be, so I see us continuing that.”

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