Tuttosi joining startup English league

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This article was published 05/09/2018 (2845 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Emily Tuttosi always wanted to go on an adventure after finishing her university degree, and she has found a gigantic one.

The Souris product, who is turning 23 later this month, is on her way to England to play in the new Tyrrells Premier 15s women’s rugby league. It isn’t a professional league — in fact, there aren’t any professional ones for women in England. However, the circuit is in the second year of a three-year pilot program to determine whether it can become a professional women’s rugby league.

Although she won’t be making money playing rugby and will have to find a job after she arrives overseas, Tuttosi felt it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

“I guess you can play a lot more rugby in the winter there than you can here and just to keep trying to chase my goal of getting more caps for Canada. The more caps I can get, the better,” said Tuttosi, who will take the field with the Loughborough Lightning.

“Every opportunity to play with different players is an opportunity to learn how to play off different people or their game style. Just being in an environment like that full time when not in school, I think it will be an interesting way to learn how the style of game is played in England compared to Canada because it is played slightly different everywhere in the world.”

Tuttosi has had a pretty solid career.

She was a force in her high school career while playing her hometown Sabres, helping them win Westman High School Rugby titles in 2012 and 2013.

Tuttosi, a five-foot-seven hooker, then went to the University of Calgary to join the Dinos. She was named a four-time Canada West all-star and helped the program to its first conference title and appearance at nationals in 2016. The Dinos won a bronze medal at the U Sports championship.

Calgary won the Canada West crown again last year, although Tuttosi missed a pair of games in her final year before exhausting her eligibility while recovering from a knee scope, and the team finished fourth at nationals.

During all this time, Tuttosi worked her way up through Rugby Manitoba’s and Rugby Canada’s programs and is currently on the senior women’s national team.

She believes she accomplished everything she wanted to with the Dinos.

“I definitely took the most out of my university career,” Tuttosi said. “Unfortunately injuries hit and upsets happen with our squad, but from where I started to where I finished, we went from having never defeated the U of (Alberta) Pandas to having an undefeated season and then to Canada West and making it to nationals. I’d say that’s enough growth for my career.”

As proud as she is about helping to build up the Dinos program to being a perennial national contender, she’s not done trying to help women’s rugby grow.

There aren’t many professional women’s rugby 15s leagues in the world — Tuttosi also said she’s too slow to play 7s — and she takes a lot of pride in trying to build up the sport and a potential professional league.

“I feel really good about it,” she said. “People are like ‘You’re not getting paid,’ but every program for women’s sports in any sport has this stage of it. Even our varsity team, making sure we establish our program enough for the girls in the future to be able to play on it. Or provincial teams, yeah, you’re driving hours but sustaining it so the girls who want to go on it can. 

“I feel really, really good about it. If down the road this league turns out to be a huge success, then you know you were a part of it and there’s no way I’m not going to come out of it having grown as an athlete and a person too.”

Tuttosi, who played with the Calgary Hornets club team this summer and the Prairie Wolfpack in the women’s Canadian Rugby Championships, has a work visa for England but will be looking for a job to help make ends meet. 

She did work during university to save up enough money for an adventure after she graduated with a bachelor of science degree in kinesiology, but will need more to last her time overseas.

Her long-term goal is to continue playing with the national women’s team and to represent Canada in the 2021 Women’s Rugby World Cup.

Spending the next eight months playing in England and trying to help a league become professional is something she’s looking forward to. She also hopes to inspire rugby players from all over the country to pursue their dreams as well, regardless of where they’re from, including a small community like Souris.

“It’s funny because I’m like ‘I’m from Souris’ and people are like ‘What is that?’” Tuttosi said. 

“When I was growing up through school, there were girls that were older than me playing provincial rugby and I was like ‘That’s so cool,’ and then people are playing university rugby and made U20. 

“It’s kind of cool because I had those girls to look up to as a pathway and now maybe their pathways didn’t go where mine is now, but it created somewhere for me to branch off of and I hope girls coming up know that just because you are from a small town doesn’t mean that you can’t fight for what you want.”

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