The Lakes District Secondary School (LDSS) Lakers boys rugby team took advantage of an opportunity to attend the BC Secondary Schools Rugby Union Tier II Sevens Championship Tournament at Brentwood College in Mill Bay on Vancouver Island. The team made the long journey by bus, arriving to begin the competition on June 8. While there are not necessarily play downs to enter this competition, the Lakers were up against some of the best teams from secondary schools from all regions of BC. Sixteen teams were in attendance from Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland, the Kamloops region and the Okanagan.
There is a great divide in B.C. between northern and southern teams due to climate, proximity and development of community rugby culture. In the south the rugby season is nearly year-round. In communities on the Island, and in Vancouver many players play with their school team in spring, and also with a club team in the fall. The 2017 northern representative in this same tournament only managed to score one try in the entire five game tournament. Due to snow being on fields across the north quite late this year, and the relatively undeveloped rugby culture north of Williams Lake.
The LDSS team walked off the 15 hour bus ride for three round robin games on Friday. They lost the first 48-5 against, Esquimalt High School (650 students), a strong team that has a rugby development program for students and went undefeated in the tournament. The second game was extremely close, with the boys pushing Ballenas Secondary (over 200 grade 12 students alone) from Parksville on Vancouver Island right to the final whistle. The game was tied 12-12 until the final play when Ballenas scored the winning try running off a penalty. The final round robin game was a 42-12 loss to another very strong rugby school, Ecole R.A. McMath (1300 students) from Richmond.
For a team that had not played a single game yet this year going up against such strong, year-round programs, scoring 29 points in the round robin was a huge victory. There were three other teams at this tournament who were shut out with scores of 0 on the first day while the Lakers scored at least one try per game.
The second day was the playoff side of the competition. The first game had LDSS up against Mt. Boucherie Secondary (1300 students), from Kelowna, coached by LDSS coach Jeremy Gooding’s teaching practicum mentor Chris Carter. With the connection between the coaches, LDSS has travelled twice to Kelowna in the past to play Boucherie teams to gain experience. LDSS lost this game 31-10, but once again put up a very strong performance against very tough competition. The final game of the tournament for LDSS was against Cowichan Secondary’s (1700 students) team from Duncan. LDSS lost a heart breaker 20-17 against the hard tackling boys from the Cowichan Valley.
The lineup: Starting seven: Marlon Bloomfield, Mat Hopegood, Jon Gooding (captain), Otto Umstatter (captain), Cameron Zigler, Riley Bett and Lucas Phillips. Reserve players were Ethan Oman, Jean Hopegood, Brandon Burt, Cameron Sebastian and Cable Mackay. Two grade eight’s also travelled with the team to watch the tournament and gain experience: Daylan Brown and Brody Green. LDSS had one of the best scoring/tackling players in the tournament in Marlon (seven tries), and another extremely strong performance from Mat (three tries).
