It wasn’t the title the team was looking for, but the Springbank Phoenix girls’ rugby squad still found success at the provincial championships in Calgary last weekend.
The team completed its first official regular rugby season with a 46-5 win over Drayton Valley’s Frank Maddock for the B-side title at the Calgary Rugby Union on June 11.
The Phoenix dropped its first game 23-0 to the eventual bronze-medal winners from Rimbey on June 10, to relegate to the B-side, but responded later the same day with a 38-5 win over Cold Lake.
“What happened is our girls had an emotional high after Zones, then came out flat and didn’t play their best game against Rimbey,” said the team’s manager Gary Moore. “But the last two games were decisive wins. It was a good couple days of rugby. We let most of second wave of girls play and all of the eligible girls got to play at some point. The game against Frank Maddock was the probably their finest game all year.”
Moore credited both coaches, Kennet Moore and Dave Rhydderch, with teaching the team about the game and leading them to success this season.
“Those two, who are both great rugby players, deserve a lot of credit for showing the girls all sorts of plays,” Gary Moore said.
After playing only in exhibition games for the past several years, the Phoenix made the move into league play this year. Moore said it was a great inaugural season, and since the team will graduate less than 25 per cent of its players, things are already looking good for next year.
“This year, the numbers blossomed, as did the quality of play,” he said. “I’m really proud of how this group came together, and it bodes really well moving forward. I thought we did fairly well for our first year. We ended the season on a real high note.”
