Dauphin sweeps silver at rugby provincials

One reality in sports that doesn’t seem to change is how the bronze medalists are always happier than the ones who finish a spot higher.

For the Dauphin Clippers, that fact was quite crystal clear as their boys and girls clubs both ended up on the wrong side of the winners circle in their respective high school rugby provincial championships at John Reilly Field on Saturday.

“There’s definitely a lot of emotions,” said Clippers senior flank Kierstin Vandekerckhove post-game. “I’d say it’s kind of a bittersweet feeling, we were all working hard and put all of our effort until the end of the game, so as soon as we were done and we didn’t win, it was definitely sad.”

The 18-year-old did everything she could, including trudging through more than five defenders at a time to try and bring her team back into the game, but it ultimately wasn’t enough as Dauphin dropped a 31-22 decision to the Steinbach Sabres in the final, officially losing its undefeated tag in what was a spectacular season for the green sweaters.

Vandekerckhove led a high-octane Clippers offence, which helped them dominate the competition all season in games that would see them score up to 80 points, but the Sabres were a clear exception. Steinbach set the tone and quickly showed they were levels above the Westman teams Dauphin was used to facing.

“It comes to a point where you want to face a good team,” Vandekerckhove said. “I want the adversity where we’re working harder because that’s how you get better, so to play this team that is better, it gave us the pushback we needed and I guess it gives us that pressure, like that drive that we need to work harder, be better and see what’s working and what’s not working.”

The whole game plan wasn’t working fairly early on, as it seemed the Sabres had their dynamic offence controlled, maybe even caged in at times, while on the other side, Steinbach’s attack was quick, shifty and strong with Elenoa Kaukirewa at the helm. She posted two tries and three converts, while Mirlande Kehler, Madison Friesen, Ciara O’Connor, and Rylan Harder each earned tries of their own to put to them in the driver’s seat.

The Clippers played catch up practically the entire game, but tries from Jorja Percival, Paityn Bourgoin, Desiree Lariviere and Edie Fleck along with a big push in the second half kept them waiting in the wings until time officially ran out on them.

Vandekerckhove shed some tears, as did the rest of her teammates after failing to three-peat, but it didn’t take too long for her to appreciate how far she and her teammates have really come.

“We worked together as a team and that’s what this sport is about, really,” she said. “That’s all I could ask for out of everyone that I played with in our season, so being able to be a captain of the team, it felt honestly really good to see all the younger girls play as good as they did, and it felt almost like an accomplishment that the team could be in the position that they were to play in this game.

“Just going from when I was in Grade 10, when I started at the bottom and trying to work as hard as I can to get to the top and get to a starting position, to now being a starter and a captain, that’s what I look back on the most and that’s what I’d say I most proud of myself is working hard to get to where I stood in my ranking as a vet on the team, so that’s what I want to be remembered for.”

Vandekerckhove got into rugby in Grade 10 when a few of her friends dragged her out to a practice. While she was skeptical at first, it didn’t take long for her to fall in love with it. The last three years, she’s played high school, club and even represented Manitoba at the Canada Summer Games.

And as it turns out, she may need to listen to her friends more often, as she is now set to join the Brandon University Bobcats rugby squad next season.

“I’m so excited,” said Vandekerckhove. “Although high school is over and I liked being a captain and vet on the team, I’m ready to start back at the bottom and work my way up again and just look up to players and push myself to work harder.”

Boys lose in heartbreaker

Another senior moving on from the Clippers rugby program is Julien Lopez.

The beast of a fly-half and Dauphin yielded a similar start to the girls group, which ended up costing them following a 26-19 defeat at the hands of the St. Paul’s Crusaders.

“Well, we came into this game as an underdog and honestly, we didn’t know what to expect,” said Lopez post-game. “We play this game, we have the whole crowd cheering against us since we beat those teams in the past and their animosity grew from the sideline. We gotta keep our cool and that’s a hard thing to do, especially in the finals and on the other side, we’re playing a dynasty. They’ve been winning for how many years now and then you play your heart out with five minutes left and then the whistle blew, and your season’s over.”

The Clippers had about as bad of a first half as they could have imagined, digging themselves into a 26-0 hole thanks to tries from Christophe Cote, Calum Brownlee, Gabriel Kass and Haedyn Fair and three converts from Connor Nolet.

St. Paul’s dictated play with plenty of physicality and a possession heavy style, but Dauphin’s chemistry also seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. Passes weren’t accurate, rucks were shaky, and communication was off, and Lopez admitted that was the case after the game.

He believes they were more mental errors than physical ones, though.

“First half, we came in scared,” Lopez said. St. Paul’s is a big private school, they went to Banff (for a tournament), they did all this stuff, they have all these professional coaches and we came in thinking this was the David vs. Goliath story, so we were maybe not as confident.

“In the second half, we were down, but we saw what they were. We saw that this is nothing to be scared of, so we mounted our energy and that’s what started the comeback.”

Confidence mixed with some extremely necessary urgency seemed to make something click. Dauphin’s pushback came quick and heavy as Josh Yakielashek and Emil Saifulin touched down for two tries while Jordan Evans collected two converts to make it a game again.

Then with under five minutes remaining, Lopez showed off some fantastic athleticism weaving through a handful of Crusader defenders before scoring to make it a one score game. Right after he got up, he jogged back to Dauphin’s side of half screaming “One more boys, one more!” while holding one finger up. He was fired up, and so was the rest of the Clippers crew.

They held possession for the rest of the game and came razor thin to evening the game, assuming a successful kick convert, but it wasn’t meant to be, as St. Paul’s held on for the title.

“We just ran out of time, I guess,” said Lopez. “We got 12 seniors, that’s 12 boys that’ll never play rugby again together, we’re all moving on to our next chapter of our life, so we’re sad, but happy we made it this far and happy to have this close of a game, but sad to know we didn’t come out ahead.

“There’s so much stuff to look back on, tries, wins, losses, but that’s not what’s important in the end, you just look at the friends you made. You go down, your teammates have your back, they’re more than just teammates in the end. We go to school together, we hang out together, we do so much stuff together so after four years together, this is family, it’s not even a sport.”

Lopez is sad his days of high school rugby are over, but is also excited for what’s to come. He said he’s talked to a few university coaches, but doesn’t plan on going to school right away. Instead, he hopes to play club in New Zealand for a year.

》mdelucataronno@brandonsun.com