Tuttosi returns to Canada to coach

After eight years playing the highest level of professional rugby in the United Kingdom, Emily Tuttosi is returning to Canada.

The 30-year-old national team member, who was inducted into the Souris Sabres’ Legacy Cup on Saturday, is coming home for an opportunity to serve as a full-time assistant coach under new head coach Jennifer Russell with the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees women’s program.

The school announced the hiring on June 4, with the Gee-Gees’ six-game regular season beginning Aug. 29.

“I know I have to transition or think about life after full-time rugby eventually, and I’ve been privileged to do a lot of coaching in the UK,” Tuttosi said. “When an opportunity came up to go for one in Canada, the pull of coaching Canadian athletes meant more to me than I thought it did at first. It was an opportunity to still get to play and train myself but also get to coach the next generation of rugby players.

“I couldn’t think of more of a dream come true right now. I went for it, and thankfully they’re a wonderful program that encourages female athletes. In my case, that’s being an athlete and a coach and I think it could be really special to show people you can do that.”

When she was in Exeter for the past six years, she coached the Newton Abbott women’s team and also squads from the Chiefs under-23 pathway.

She noted a good number of the players on Canada’s roster have headed overseas, but she thinks it’s important to have some come back and share their experience.

“I’m super, super excited,” Tuttosi said. “It’s funny because the Gee-Gees actually did crush my dreams at nationals when I was a (Calgary) Dino. Overall, I’m honoured to have gotten the job but really excited in a program that has a lot of vibrant, promising athletes and an athletic department that supports us and a co-coach that I’m really excited to work with and the ability to be what a Yonner (Brian Yon) or (Calgary head coach) Simon Chi or (national team coach) Kévin Rouet have been for me in different ways as a coach.

“I hope I can install my passion and love for the game in the next generation.”

She was coached by Brian Yon in Souris until she graduated in 2013, and as a video played showing highlights of Sabres history at the program’s 25th anniversary celebration on Saturday evening in the community hall, Tuttosi was asked about his impact on her life.

“I really can’t picture my life without rugby, and that obviously started in Souris,” Tuttosi said. “I think some of the core values of the game, Yonner taught us from young. It’s respect, respecting your opponents, respecting the venues, respecting the change rooms, your teammates, and that obviously rings through at any level of the game.

“I think also the commitment. His commitment to the program for 25 years has been incredible, but every year he is still pushing for people to chase their dreams if they want or just play high school rugby if that’s going to bring them joy. It’s just spreading the love of a great game.”

She originally took up the sport with her twin Amy because their older brother Brendynn played, and the sisters became four-year starters with the Sabres in Grade 9.

“We were naturally quite aggressive, and what other spaces as a female athlete do you get to go and just unleash?” Tuttosi said. “He really does hone that in for both male and female athletes. ‘Hey you’re physical, there’s a spot for you here.’

“It had a massive, massive impact and Westman rugby is really lucky that he came when he did and has built the program to what it is today.”

She played for Manitoba four times, once for a Manitoba-Saskatchewan team and several times for Wolfpack, the combined Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta club.

After her time in the Sabres program, the five-foot-seven Tuttosi spent five seasons with the Calgary Dinos, earning four Canada West All-Star honours and being named an All-Canadian in 2016. Tuttosi graduated in 2018 with a bachelor of science in kinesiology.

That’s when she made the move from flank to hooker, which is right in the middle of the action in the front line.

After university, she played two seasons with the Loughborough Lightning and six with the Exeter Chiefs in the Allianz Premier 15s, the elite women’s rugby league in England.

“It was incredible,” Tuttosi said. “For me personally, I’ve made so many memories and it’s helped shape me to be the Canadian athlete I am as well. The growth in the women’s game in that time has been exponential.

“When I first went over there, there were no contracts at all in the women’s game, domestically or for some national teams. There were maybe a couple hundred people at games. Now, athletes are recognized, there are contracts for some countries but all contracts domestically over there.

“There are crowds that are following, there are big social media following, the whole game — that you can see it, you can be it — is the most vibrant it’s ever been for female rugby players.”

Since the 2025 World Cup shattered previous television viewership records, a new international series of games has been unveiled.

The 2026 WXV Global Series features the top 18 female teams in the world in the first year of a fixed three-year cycle that aligns with qualification for the 2029 World Cup.

The top 12 teams — Canada, Australia, England, France, Italy, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, United States and Wales — will play between four and six games annually within a new September-October window.

Canada will play five games, with three overseas and two against England in Canada.

The other six teams — Brazil, Fiji, Hong Kong China, Netherlands, Samoa and Spain — will play in a single destination in 2026 and 2028.

The Canadian roster will be assembled by the end of August through scouting players in their various leagues. While Tuttosi now has 44 caps with the national team, she isn’t taking anything for granted.

“The mindset I keep is that you’re always fighting to be better,” Tuttosi said. “To better than you were, not necessarily against your competition. I think having a lot of games and some experience under my belt does bode in my favour for sure.”

Tuttosi competed for Canada in the World Cup in both 2022 and 2025, being named to the 2022 World Rugby dream team of the year and winning a player of the match award against Scotland in 2025.

“It really doesn’t get old,” Tuttosi said of the opportunity to play for Canada. “Every time I get to wear the (Maple) Leaf I think of the privilege and where you come from and what your journey is. Whether it’s one time or 100 times, every single time is special because it’s such a privilege. You have to play for the people who can’t do it for various reasons.”

Tuttosi was on Rugby Canada’s radar all along, playing on national teams at the under-18 and U20 levels. At age 22, she got a taste of the game at the highest level, earning her first cap with the national senior women’s rugby team in 2018.

Even at her level, Tuttosi said imposter syndrome has weighed into her thought processes at different stages of her career, and even now she has to remind herself that she truly belongs.

“Even before every single rugby game I play now, I go onto the field and I power pose and I close my eyes and picture myself doing aspects of the game well and telling myself that I’m going to have fun and I deserve to be here,” Tuttosi said. “I think we have some evidence, so when my head goes wiry, I know I’ve built it and I’ve worked really hard over the years, but if I was to say it’s completely erased as an athlete, that would be a lie. It’s definitely a mental skill you can work on.

“I say to the athletes I coach as well, that you need to believe that you deserve to be here and that comes from building evidence on and off the pitch with your work rate. It’s definitely a mental skill: If you let it weigh you down, it can consume your life.”

It’s clear her many supporters in Souris are confident she belongs there.

In May, a sign went up on the highway into town saying it was where she was from, and on Saturday a second sign was raised beneath the scoreclock at the field outside the school.

“It’s absolutely surreal,” Tuttosi said. “When I was first approached about the sign, it felt kind of fake. They were going to fundraise, and then the funds came in so quick from so many people that have been supportive of my journey the whole time.

“Even when my teammates in England saw the one on the highway unveiled online, they said ‘This is nuts, this doesn’t happen to people.’ I was ‘No it doesn’t but my community has honestly always been behind me and female athletes and female rugby.’

“The one at the pitch, it’s also really special. I can’t believe I’m one of the spokespeople or role models that people can look up to. It doesn’t matter if you’re from a small town, it doesn’t matter what your background is, you just have to work hard and say yes to things that scare you sometimes and it can lead you in crazy places.

“I’m not going to say that everyone is going to make the national team if they play rugby, but I can confidently say that everyone can be a better version of themselves.”

Tuttosi is so down to earth, it’s hard to remember she’s an elite athlete. She would be the last person to actively court the spotlight but she recognizes the value of having solid local role models.

If young female athletes want to look up to her, she’ll do everything she can to live up to their gaze. And she said people can learn from the long road she’s taken.

“It wasn’t linear,” Tuttosi said. “It wasn’t a perfect story of getting to the national team. It kind of seemed like a fairytale but for four years I wasn’t picked for the national team. In that time, I could have folded, but I love rugby and I love playing it.

“I worked really hard, but you don’t have to be the best at everything or even be the biggest or strongest or fastest. From my personal story, I worked really hard. I was never any of those things, I was just a real workhorse, a real student of the game.

“An important part of my story is that it hasn’t been linear and that you can really have a special journey, even if you have setbacks along the way.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com