Even without their full roster, the Bow Valley CobraCats girls’ rugby team was able to finish fourth in the province at the ASAA Tier 1 rugby championships.
With the provincial tournament playing out over two days in Edmonton on June 3 and 4 – overlapping with both Cochrane High and Bow Valley High schools’ graduation ceremonies – the combined team was able to find just enough bodies to compete.
“I think it would have been interesting to see what we could have done as a full team,” said CobraCats winger Marcelle De Bruin. “Missing our players was hard, but I think we put up a good fight and coming fourth was really amazing in the end.”
De Bruin, a Grade 12 student at Cochrane High, made the decision to miss the school’s convocation ceremony to instead play against Lethbridge Collegiate Institute in the team’s first game of the weekend last Friday.
The CobraCats won the game 17-5, despite fielding just 18 players.
“Winning that game was important,” said De Bruin. “I didn’t want to let my team down and I thought going to rugby was important because it’s my last year.
“I talked to some of my teachers, just wondering if I was making the right decision, and they told me, ‘You’re not gonna remember walking across the stage, you’re gonna remember being with your team and playing the sport you love.’”
The graduate had already made the difficult decision to miss the coinciding ASAA provincial track and field championship in Medicine Hat, where she qualified to compete in the shotput event.
Ultimately, De Bruin missed only one of the CobraCats’ three games over the weekend. After playing the first game, she drove back to Cochrane Friday night, opting out of the game against the Raymond Comets to make it home just in time for the grad banquet at Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre.
The CobraCats ended up losing that game 50-0 and at the end of the weekend, Raymond pocketed the championship for the 11th time in the last 12 years, (excluding the 2020 and 2021 seasons which were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic).
“Raymond [High School] is something special,” said CobraCats assistant coach Brian Morgotch. “Since 2009, they have been the number-one girls’ rugby team in the province every year except for one – and that year, they were number two.
“They play very strong rugby. But even though we lost 50-0, it didn’t feel that way. Our girls played one of their best games all season.”
Despite the lopsided score line, the team put forward their best defensive showing all year, according to Morgotch.
“It was really impressive to see how well they did, how much they came together and just how much they improved throughout the year. They could go into a game like Raymond and compete with them, even though the score didn’t justify the way they played,” he said.
On Saturday, De Bruin made her second trip north to play in the CobraCats’ final game against Calgary’s Notre Dame High School. The Cochrane team had just 16 players, compared to Notre Dame’s 70.
By halftime, they were down to 14 players due to injuries and had no spares or substitutes to call on.
“The girls were beyond exhausted,” said Morgotch. “We basically had to call the game and say we just don’t have the numbers to continue. We didn’t want to risk it, because when you start getting tired, that’s when people start getting hurt.”
It was an emotional ending to what was a hard-fought weekend, he added, but the team was understanding of the decision to concede the game with a final score of 22-7 for Calgary.
The CobraCats left the tournament in Alberta’s capital with a nomination for the sportsmanship banner, which De Bruin said was a good indicator of just how far the team had come throughout the season.
“We started to really grow over the season and getting nominated for that was really impressive for our team showing just how much growth we’ve had,” she said.
At the end of the weekend, Notre Dame took home bronze in the tournament and Strathcona High School won silver. For full results, visit the ASAA website.
