Viking girls claim Townsend Shield

The Vincent Massey Vikings romped to a 71-0 victory over the host Crocus Plainsmen in Westman High School Rugby girls’ action on Friday afternoon to win the Townsend Shield.

The award, which is handed out in honour of former girls Crocus rugby coach and program founder Larry Townsend, is presented to the winner of the annual game between the two Brandon high schools.

Maria Matthies led the way with five tries, while Bukumni Idowu and Lyla Demarce had two and Chloe Dupuis, Kaydance Fontaine, Maya Atkinson and Sofiya Akatova each had one. Asia Kryschuk had three converts.

“This feels really good,” Matthies said. “We made such a big deal about it. Our coaches were ‘We need to be practising to beat Crocus.’ Especially beating them on their soil, that feels really good.”

For Vikings head coach Nancy Pitcairn, it’s personal.

“For us, this is the game we care about,” Pitcairn said. “Even though Dauphin is a great competitor and Souris always puts together a great team — Brian (Yon) is a competitive fella — but for us the game against Crocus … I’ve played with their coaches, I’ve coached their coaches, I have coached their daughters and had all the connections with their coaching staff. For us, it’s a rivalry.

“There were some cheeky texts back and forth last night as we came into this game — it might have been instigated by me — and we might have played back and forth with that but we know it’s going to be a fun game because the two teams are competitive.

“We just happened today to start getting out ahead of them and they got down on themselves.”

Crocus pushed the ball deep early in the first half but Massey was able to shut it down and Matthies opened the scoring on a long run. She scored on a short run soon after and the rout was on.

“We usually like to give up some points early so it was nice not to do that,” Pitcairn said with a chuckle. “We do tend to get down on ourselves when we let points get away from us. Our main goal today was just to stay positive today throughout the whole game.

“Mistakes are going to happen, it’s a 60-minute game and we’re just going to keep playing and play the way we know how.”

Matthies agreed the early lead was helpful.

“I think it was good because it really got the momentum going,” Matthies said. “It keeps the team’s energy up and also a lot of times when it’s not going your way, the girls start to get mad at each other and get defeated. It’s really hard to keep the mood up when you’re on the losing side so as we start to break down their morale, it’s a lot easier because they’re losing a lot of team spirit.”

Pitcairn said the Grade 12 student Matthies grew up in a rugby family and understood the game long before she began to play in high school. The fourth-year player is now using that knowledge to her benefit in a big way.

“Maria, since she arrived in Grade 9, loves to run,” Pitcairn said. “When she was in Grade 9, we had her out on the wing where we gave her space all day. For her to find five tries at the centre where there is a lot more pressure and to still find that space is quite a feat.

“She looks for where the space is and she runs like there is a purpose, which you can’t train.”

The Vikings led 20-0 at the half, and then exploded for 51 points in the second half in an endless procession past the Plainsmen try-line.

Matthies said the Vikings have shown a lot of improvement as the season has worn on, calling it Massey’s best game of the season.

“I think it’s working as a team a lot more and communicating,” Matthies said. “We had a lot of good passes and stuff, we were really playing as a team instead of for ourselves. We weren’t trying to stand out and be the star player. A lot of the plays were for the good of the team and I think that’s really important if we want to keep doing good this season.”

Both teams are now 2-2. The semifinals begin next week.

For now, the important thing is that Matthies and her teammates have bragging rights in Brandon.

“I’m pretty close friends with one of the girls on the team and she was ‘Oh we’re going to beat you, we’re going to beat you,’ and I was ‘Sure,’” Matthies said. “I’m also familiar with the coach too so it’s fun. But it can get pretty intense between the schools, it is a crazy rivalry.”

CROCUS 27, MASSEY 10

In the boys game, Xander Blythe had three tries and Kayden MacEachern had two for Crocus, while Eric Singfat had one convert. For Massey, Divine Okaekwu and Jack Ficek touched the ball down.

It was a hard-hitting war of attrition for both teams, with both teams losing players to injury. In fact, three players were down after Blythe’s try that put his team up 22-10.

“It was a real physical game,” Crocus head coach Brent Allum said. “It’s actually been one of the things we’ve focused on this year. It’s one of the strengths Crocus has brought in a lot of our best seasons, making sure that other team really feels it and by the game of the game, they know they were in a contest.

“As the game goes on, as we saw here today, we wore down the other team and started seeing some better results as it goes on.”

Okaekwu opened the scoring but with four minutes left in the half but Blythe quickly tied it, with the game tied 5-5 at half-time.

“I left the field saying it was a tie game and anybody’s ballgame,” MacEachern said.

After Ficek restored the five-point lead for the Vikings, MacEachern picked up the ball on the 10 and by sheer force of will, rammed through a number of Vikings defenders to touch the ball down to tie the game 10-10.

He repeated the feat later in the half, earning what proved to be the winning points by plowing through Massey defenders rather than around them.

“Two of his tries were just no-quit tries,” Allum said. “He had at least two or three guys tackling him or breaking tackles for each other of those tries, and it was just him refusing to go down. The kid is a bit of a machine. Sometimes he just decides ‘No, I’m not going down’ and he just pushed through. Those were some serious individual-effort tries.”

The Grade 12 student, who lines up at middle linebacker and fullback on the football team, said about a dozen members of the Crocus rugby team suit up for both. MacEachern said that gave them plenty of motivation on Friday.

“I play football, and every year we lose to them,” MacEachern said. “It’s good to get them back.”

Massey fell to 0-4 on the season, while Crocus improved to 2-2. But neither of those records, nor the final score, give a good indication of how close and hard-fought the game was. In the end, Crocus was simply better in the big moments.

“There were some real standout individual plays,” Allum said. “We’ve got some stunning athletes who are running with us. Kayden MacEachern as our 10 and Eric Singfat, every time they get their hands on the ball, something special is going to happen. It’s nice as a coach to have that and be able to fall back on it: Sometimes a couple of individual plays really just moves it along.

“We need to work on making that more of a team effort. There was some team failure in our structure today that we have to work on still but overall, you can’t be too upset with a win.”

》 pbergson@brandonsun.com