Rugby Category for BC Summer Games

by Gurpreet Kambo:

While Fraser Valley One took gold in the Boys Rugby competition in the BC Games, that wasn’t the only thing hometown rugby fans had to celebrate this Sunday.

The girls tournament ended with a strange turn of events. The two Fraser Valley girls teams and players, many of whom know each other, squared off in the final to decide gold and silver. The hard-fought match ended up going towards the Fraser Valley One girls, with a final result of 27-5.\

“I’m ecstatic, I’m so happy. We worked so hard for it, every one of us,”  said Lauren Kerr, captain of Fraser Valley One. “Determination, that’s the main thing. If you don’t have that, you don’t have anything. You have to work your butt off, and we did. We won every game, we were undefeated. We had the girls that wanted it so much.”

According to Fraser Valley 2 captain Alexa Martin, her team may have been perceived as an underdog coming in. “We definitely expected to [make the final] but other teams didn’t… there were expectations for us that were a lot lower than what we got. But we definitely played our game and proved that we can be the best that we can be.”

When asked what the challenges are with coaching two teams playing each other, coach Jodi Cornell said, “It’s awkward… normally when I coach on the side, I’m very loud. I’ll point out where my girls need to attack, where the other teams weak points are. But, when my two teams are playing each other I’m just there to encourage with both sides.”

“Both teams, we talked to them before [the game],” said Cornell. “We said ‘this is the same as any other final. We don’t know who’s gonna win, we don’t know what’s gonna happen. We want you to play like you don’t know the team across from you.”

As for whether any of the girls asked which team she roots for, she said, “I think they’re smarter than that. I just cheer for individual wins. Every kid has fun. I didn’t care which one won, I’m just glad they had fun.”

by Gurpreet Kambo:

The rugby games both started and ended with an air of sportsmanship and camaraderie. By the third day of competition, a noticeably more competitive atmosphere had arrived with the medal games looming.

The boys rugby tournament at the BC Summer Games ended with a nail-biter at South Surrey Athletic Park between Vancouver Island (Zone 6) and Fraser Valley (Zone 3). Vancouver Island scored first and took a 5-0 lead. However, Fraser Valley rallied back and ended up winning the game and the gold medal by a 12-5 margin.

Despite defeating them for the gold medal, both teams had nothing but praise for their opponents, who share an ongoing rivalry.
“We’ve been in many tournaments with this team – they’re a fantastic group of boys,” said Michael Smith, captain of Fraser Valley One.

“We’ve played Fraser Valley so many times,” said Brandon Schellenberger, who plays hooker for Vancouver Island. ”We’ve won one against them in Burnaby. In Victoria they beat us in the finals again, so taking silver twice is good.”

“It takes complete dedication and heart to win [gold],” added Smith. “Your team is like your backbone, you cannot work without it. It takes so much heart and a lot of effort.”

by Marisa Babic and Gurpreet Kambo

Deborah Carter and her 17-year-old daughter Alyssah share a love for sports.

Carter, 45, and her daughter both coach athletics in track and field for Special Olympics in Surrey.

Even when they’re not coaching, they “do everything together.”

But at the 2012 BC Summer Games in Surrey, mother and daughter are miles apart at opposite ends of the host city.

Deborah is coaching the Fraser Valley (Zone 3) Special Olympics team at Bear Creek Park in several athletics events.

In addition to being a coach, Alyssah is also an athlete and she’s competing for medals with her Fraser River-Delta (Zone 4) girls rugby team at the South Surrey Athletic Park.

“She’s at the rugby game competing and for the first time I don’t get to watch her,” Deborah said with a tinge of disappointment in her voice.

“My mom could not be here today, and I’m very sad,” said Alyssah.  ”My mom is always there. She’s always at any of the things I do, a meet, or a competition supporting me.  It sucks.. and I miss her.”

Despite the distance that separates them, Alyssah is keeping in close touch with her mother, sending a flurry of text messages between plays.

“She’s doing great and I’m getting more text messages that I ever have before because she’s keeping me updated on how it’s going,” Deborah said.

Originally, Deborah wanted to become a special education teacher but her path led her to coaching with the Special Olympics organization. She’s been coaching now for 27 years.

When she was 31, and single, Deborah adopted three-year-old Alyssah from Haiti.

They’ve shared a close bond ever since.

“Team Zebra – that’s me and my mom,” noted Alyssah. “We’re Team Zebra because she’s white and I’m black and when we put our hands together, our fingers look like zebra stripes so we came up with that a couple years ago. Team Zebra always sticks together.”

Alyssah started volunteering with Special Olympics Surrey at the age of 12 and once she was old enough she became an assistant coach.

“We’ve done everything together. She’s growing up, doing her own thing now, but she still wants me around, and I’m very lucky,” Deborah said proudly.

Deborah noted Alyssah’s grandparents and pals are snapping lots of pictures and shooting videos of the rugby match at the South Surrey Athletic Park so she can catch up on all the action, after the Games close, at a special family gathering.

“We’ll do a post-party Sunday night.”

by Gurpreet Kambo:

“They generally think we’re ruffians,” said Jodie Cornell, coach of the girls’ Fraser Valley (Zone 3) Rugby team, on the public perception of rugby in North America. “[People think] it’s just a crazy sport where we run around hitting each other… a lot of parents see it as a barbarian sport without rules.”

17-year-old Alex Mueller of Surrey plays wing and sweep (fly-half) and has personal experience with this perception of her favourite sport.

“My parents wouldn’t let me play at first… I broke my ankle a whole bunch of times playing soccer so they were afraid for me,” said Mueller. “They trusted me to not hurt anyone, but they didn’t trust everybody else. They thought people might tackle my head or something.”

“Rugby’s high contact… although it’s rough, it’s very structured,” said coach Cornell. “We teach the girls from an early age proper form going into contact, [or] a tackle.”

“If you’re making a tackle, your shoulders are always above your hips, in a squat, aiming for the other person’s thighs and wrapping your arms around… [going] to deck with that person. It’s illegal to hit someone football-style, to just bosh them.”

Players are also taught how to fall and how to take a hit.

“If you’re the person being hit, you’re braced coming into contact,” said Cornell. “You know you’re being hit around the mid-section, so you’re aiming to get your knees to your hip to your shoulder down in a flowing motion.”

This so-called “hooligan’s sport” actually has very specific rules about what is and what isn’t allowed. “Anything above the shoulder is going to be called [by the referee],” noted Cornell. “You’re not allowed to whip somebody by their jersey, no arm bars, no punches or anything like that… there has to be both bodies connected. You can hit from any side, but you have to be coming from an onside position so people always know they are generally coming from the front unless you make a break.”

“It looks out of control if you don’t know what’s going on but the contact is very structured,” the coach added.

In Mueller’s case, she was eventually able to make her parents come around.

“I just decided one day to go to a practice without telling them,” she said. “I told them ‘I love it, I’m going again,’ and they just respected it.

“They’re both here today, and they support me fully. They said they like watching rugby better than soccer,” she said, noting that her rugby injuries have been comparably minimal, only dislocating a finger once.

Mueller said there is a sense of camaraderie and sportsmanship in rugby, even with members of opposing teams.

“You make a tackle, and they just stand up and say ‘that was a good tackle, you destroyed me.’”