New coaches lead Barbs women

The two new coaches who run the Brandon Barbarians women’s team don’t care why their players are there. All they care about is the commitment.

Head coach Michael (MG) Gohl and first-year assistant coach Bryson McNish said everyone has their own motivation, and that’s OK.

“We have some girls who play university who are here to continue to develop,” Gohl said. “We have girls who just want to have fun and meet other girls, and other girls who want to keep playing a bit of rugby. Everyone is here for a different reason, but everyone respects that reason.

“Even in practice and games, we say we’re going to lift each other up but we’re not push you down for being here for a different reason than I am. That’s what I really love about this group of players.”

After Gohl’s playing career ended, he began to coach at the high school level and also serves as an assistant with Brian Yon’s squad at Brandon University. It’s been a godsend for the women’s program, with many of the Bobcats staying active in the game during the summer with the Barbarians. Gohl said coaching senior women’s rugby is utterly unique.

“It’s different than anything I’ve ever coached before because this is a senior club,” Gohl said. “It’s different than when you have commitments, this is adults so it’s when you can. What I’ve really appreciated is that me and McNish both came to coach these women and they’ve respected us and they’ve been willing to learn what we teach them.”

McNish retired after last season. While he wanted to help out, he was reluctant to commit because he had never coached before. Just as he learned as a player, now he’s accumulating knowledge behind the bench.

“I knew I couldn’t walk away from rugby entirely,” McNish said. “I love the sport way too much. The girls were hounding me in my last year playing because I was saying that I’m done, I’m done, I’m done.

“I said I was not super versed in coaching but would love to help out, but I need someone else and thankfully MG has so much experience coaching, and has worked another really good coach in Brian Yon, so having that experience and having MG take the head-coach role is really nice.

“It’s fun watching him develop as well and he helps me learn my coaching. This team is actually a team in every sense of the word. Everyone works together, and if I say something wrong as a newer coach, they say ‘We didn’t love that, can you reword it?’ and I say ‘Yup, absolutely.’ “They allow me the grace to work on it, which I really appreciate.”

The five-team senior women’s division also includes Winnipeg’s Rowdies, Brumbies, Wasps and Assassins, with the latter tending to be the class of the league.

Brandon’s season so far includes a 69-12 victory over the Wasps on June 6, a 38-31 loss to the Rowdies on June 12, an 89-0 blowout loss to the Assassins on June 20 and a 29-29 tie with the Wasps on Saturday.

“This season they’ve done a really good job of bonding,” McNish said. “Our team in the past has had some struggles with the numbers being here and coaches who couldn’t always commit at all times. I appreciate them coming and love the energy they give, but we’ve had some time to put in and the girls are really buying into a program now and it’s showing. They’re improving and getting better every day.”

McNish said the biggest improvement the team has made this season is defensively.

“The girls have been coming up,” McNish said. “They started a little softer today. I went out and dropped off the water (during a break) and said ‘Did you notice you’re being a little soft?’ and they said ‘Yes, absolutely.’ They held themselves accountable and I didn’t have to do much.”

When things start to go badly on a rugby field they can turn into an avalanche pretty quickly, and Gohl appreciates that his group stays positive in the game, regardless of what’s going on.

“I haven’t seen anything very negative,” Gohl said. “You see sometimes that when things start going sideways, with players who want to play high level and those who are just having fun, I haven’t seen them getting down on it. It’s always ‘OK, let’s go’ and they’re excited for each other.

“I’ve really enjoyed that, and also how they’re figuring things out. We lay things out for them, and give them a lot of freedom to say ‘Hey, this is what we want to look like.’ Each player is different in that structure, and they can figure that out.”

“It’s their ship, we just steer it,” McNish adds.

Both Gohl and McNish were backs when they played, but Gohl said he’s noticed the forwards meshing really well. That might in part because of the flexibility they have with their roster.

“We have so many girls who play multiple positions,” Gohl said. “We have three or four girls who play back or forward. One girl who has specifically impressed me is Megan Thompson. In the first games he started at forward and did really good, and then we had to switch her to back and it was also really good.

“Avery (Brennan), it’s the same thing. She’s one of the best tacklers. We lack some depth with the backs so we can throw her in there.

“These are girls who are willing to step out, and some of them have played for seven or eight years and are still willing to step into different positions when we ask them when they could say ‘No, I’m comfortable here, I’ve played here my entire career.’ They’re willing got take those risks for us and it’s paid off.”

The team’s group chat has more than 30 players in it, although some are taking a year off from games. At practice, they’ve consistently drawn 18 to 20 people, which is the best they’ve had in years. They’ve had 18 or 19 players at their three road games in Winnipeg, which is a nice change from previous years when they headed into the city with 13 players and asked their opponent to drop numbers.

McNish noted there is a large group of players who are driving into Brandon from other communities, so it is a massive commitment.

“It’s a team that coming together and finding out what we’re all about,” Gohl said. “It’s the Prairies, we have to pull from where we pull from, and we have some great athletes here who just want to break through. We don’t have the size like Winnipeg, but we get some studs.”

Their upcoming home games include the Assassins (Aug. 8), the Rowdies (Aug. 15) and the Brumbies (Aug. 29), and they visit the Brumbies on Aug. 22

A significant problem lies ahead, however.

Every province but Manitoba has moved their season up to allow their post-secondary players to return to university without missing the league playoffs. Manitoba has fought that, so even if the Barbs do well, they won’t be able to advance too far because they lose so many players.

“Winnipeg hasn’t complied with that so we can’t play a full season,” Gohl said. “We can only play to a certain point and then we’re done. As first-year coaches, we’re really scratching the surface of the potential of the girls here, but the ceiling is, it’s the end of the season and sorry.”

McNish said one scenario that rolls through his mind would be absolutely perfect.

“I would love to get to the point where we’re the top team rolling in and we say ‘Hey, if you don’t move the season, then we have to step out,” McNish said. “That would be the dream.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com