Grizzlies running loose in a horse barn are usually a recipe for disaster.
But just south of Cochrane, down a dark and winding country road, behind a locked iron gate, that’s exactly what you’ll find.
“It’s awesome,” said Connor Gilbert, captain of the Bow Valley Grizzlies rugby club. “You couldn’t ask for a better place to play in the wintertime.”
This upcoming season, Rugby Alberta’s current Division 2 city champs hope to avenge their loss of last October, when they fell to the Edmonton Leprechaun Tigers in a hard-fought provincial final.
After the heartbreaker, the team took a short break from training, then got back to business early in the new year – meeting in a high school gym once a week, and playing a touch game or two at Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre on Friday nights.
But the Vinden Farms horse-riding ring is the Grizzlies’ secret weapon – allowing the guys to grind it out in a setting reminiscent of outdoor fields when it’s too cold to go outside. Matt Vinden, who played for the Grizz for one season and still sneaks out of the main house once in a while to join the fun, owns the 200-foot long, 80-foot wide facility.
“I occasionally roll around with the guys,” he said.
Player Anthony Battistone has been with the Grizz for five years, and said he was impressed by the horse barn the first time he saw it.
“When I first came out here, it was just, ‘Wow.’ This is just phenomenal. It was a little overwhelming,” he said.
In a school gym, the team is squeezed by space, they can’t wear cleats and the floor is hard and unforgiving. The wide-open barn gives the boys the ability to land hard on the ground, toss long passes, and wear spiked shoes – all of which mimics as much as possible a genuine rugby match.
“It’s a pretty sweet spot. The boys have got free rein, so they can really give her,” said coach Ty Hawes. “It’s relatively warm inside and … it’s great for getting a leg up.”
Battistone agrees the barn gives the Grizz a competitive advantage.
“We get to do so much more,” he said. “We work on set plays, line outs … I think we’re a little spoiled.”
The set-up is mutually beneficial, said Vinden, explaining the barn’s ground material is a soft sand embedded with rubber and wax-type fibres – ideal for horse training as it doesn’t kick up dust, and turns out it’s not too bad for grizzly training, too.
“Having the guys run around in their cleats actually kind of helps it – it aerates it,” Vinden said with a laugh.
The Grizz will train in the barn until April, when the pre-season starts and the weather warms up enough to head onto Cochrane’s outdoor fields. The regular season kicks off in May.
“The boys are pretty pumped up,” Hawes said.
In addition to chomping at the bit for the provincial title this year, the Grizzlies also hope to add a third group to their roster as a complement to the existing Barbarians social team and their own Tier 2 squad. Battistone said a new Tier 3 team would provide an added level of development for players coming up through the youth ranks.
“It’s a big jump from U18 to men’s,” he said, adding the ultimate goal is for the Grizz themselves to move up to Tier 1 in 2018. “We want to make that step.”
Until then, the squad will train among the horses in the barn to give themselves the best chance of galloping all the way to the top.
“We want to win it all this year.”
